About the Book

‘People are my landscape’, Isaiah Berlin liked to say, and nowhere is the truth of this observation more evident than in his letters. He is a fascinated watcher of human beings in all their variety, and revels in describing them to his many correspondents. His letters combine ironic social comedy and a passionate concern for individual freedom. His interpretation of political events, historical and contemporary, and his views on how life should be lived, are always grounded in the personal, and his fiercest condemnation is reserved for purveyors of grand abstract theories that ignore what people are really like.

This second volume of Berlin’s letters takes up the story when, after war service in the United States, he returns to life as an Oxford don. Against the background of post-war austerity, the letters chart years of academic frustration and self-doubt, the intellectual explosion when he moves from philosophy to the history of ideas, his growing national fame as a broadcaster and lecturer, the publication of some of his best-known works, his election to a professorship and his reaction to knighthood.

These are the years, too, of momentous developments in his private life: the bachelor don’s loss of sexual innocence, the emotional turmoil of his father’s death, his courtship of a married woman and transformation into husband and stepfather. Above all, these revealing letters vividly display Berlin’s effervescent personality – often infuriating, always irresistible.

About the Author

Sir Isaiah Berlin, O. M., was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1909. He came to England in 1919 and was educated at St Paul’s School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Oxford, he was a Fellow of New College (1938–50), Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory (1957–67), first President of Wolfson College (1966–75), a Fellow of All Souls College, and President of the British Academy from 1974–1978. His achievements as an historian and exponent of ideas earned him the Erasmus, Lippincott, and Agnelli Prizes, and his lifelong defence of civil liberties earned him the Jerusalem Prize. He died in 1997.

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Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Letters from Isaiah Berlin © The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2009
Letters from T. S. Eliot © Set Copyrights Limited 2009
(Quotations from) other letters © their several authors or their heirs and assigns 2009
Editorial matter © Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes 2009

Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes have asserted their right to be identified as the author and editors of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Chatto & Windus
Published by Chatto & Windus 2009

www.penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9780701178895

CONTENTS

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Isaiah Berlin

List of Illustrations

Chronology 1946–1960

Dedication

Title Page

Preface

Conventions and Abbreviations

THE LETTERS

ENTR’ACTE

1946–1948: NEW COLLEGE

1949: HARVARD

1949–1951: NEW COLLEGE AND ALL SOULS

1951–1952: HARVARD AND BRYN MAWR

1952–1953: ALL SOULS

1953: HARVARD

1953–1955: ALL SOULS

1955–1956: CHICAGO AND NEW YORK

1956–1957: MARRIAGE AND RECOGNITION

1957–1960: THE CHICHELE CHAIR

Picture Section

Appendices

The Anglo-American Predicament

The Intellectual Life of American Universities

Zhivago: Against a Pasternak Cover for Time

Who is a Jew?

Select Biographical Glossary

Index of Correspondents and Sources

General index

Copyright

For Aline Berlin

ISAIAH BERLIN

ENLIGHTENING

LETTERS 1946–1960

Edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes
with the assistance of Serena Moore

Additional research · Brigid Allen, James Chappel, Jason Ferrell,

Steffen Groß, Eleonora Paganini

Archival research · Michael Hughes

Transcription · Betty Colquhoun, Esther Johnson

Leastwise, if a man does anything all through life with a deal of bother, and likewise of some benefit to others, the details of such bother and benefit may as well be known accurately as the contrary.

Edward Lear, letter of c.1866 to Chichester Fortescue (Lord Carlingford), in Lear’s Nonsense Songs and Stories, 6th ed. (London and New York, 1888), 5

If finance permits they should be given real competent hacks – industrious and methodical ladies if possible – who could act as research assistants, card indexers etc., to whom no hope of necessary promotion need be held out.

IB to Walter Eytan, April 1951

Also by Isaiah Berlin

*

KARL MARX

THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

THE FIRST AND THE LAST

Edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly

RUSSIAN THINKERS

Edited by Henry Hardy

CONCEPTS AND CATEGORIES

AGAINST THE CURRENT

PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

THE CROOKED TIMBER OF HUMANITY

THE SENSE OF REALITY

THE ROOTS OF ROMANTICISM

THE POWER OF IDEAS

THREE CRITICS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

FREEDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

LIBERTY

THE SOVIET MIND

POLITICAL IDEAS IN THE ROMANTIC AGE

Uniform with this volume

FLOURISHING: LETTERS 1928–1946

Edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer

THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND

With Beata Polanowska-Sygulska

UNFINISHED DIALOGUE

*

For more information on Isaiah Berlin visit

http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/

ILLUSTRATIONS

The subject is IB where not otherwise stated

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

PICTURE SECTION

CREDITS

Images from the Isaiah Berlin Papers, Oxford, Bodleian Library, © The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2009, are referenced by shelfmark and folio, thus: MSB 123/456 (i.e. MS. Berlin 123, fo. 456). Otherwise credits name as many as are known to the editors of the following: photographer/photographer’s employer/collection/agent or owner. Inconsistencies in the style and/or positioning of credits are due to requirements imposed by copyright owners.

Illustrations in the text (listed by page)

Pictures (listed by Picture No)

PREFACE

He adores the complications of life and likes things to be as difficult as possible.¹

At the end of the first volume of his letters, in April 1946, Isaiah Berlin was about to sail back to England from the United States, where he had spent most of the war. As this second volume opens he returns to life as an Oxford don, resuming the academic career that the war had interrupted.

Although his period of war service in the United States had not been free from worry about his parents in England, and guilt about escaping from physical danger, Berlin’s living conditions there were comfortable. Post-war Britain was not. The country was on the verge of bankruptcy, widespread rationing was in force, mass starvation was a real possibility, and even the weather became more than usually hostile. Oxford University was soon bursting with students anxious to catch up on their deferred education, and their needs could be met only by a production-line approach very far from the leisurely pre-war style of teaching. For Berlin this was particularly frustrating, as it meant he had to defer his move from philosophy to the subject which had become his real passion – the history of ideas.

The early letters of this volume chart an uneasy combination of unremitting teaching in Oxford (mainly for New College) and a full social life both in London and in the country houses of friends and acquaintances. His ebullient, life-enhancing company was sought from all directions, and his wry observation of social quirks and quiddities is plentifully displayed in his letters. Out of term, Berlin visited Palestine at a crucial time as it moved towards independence, and played a minor but important role in setting up the Marshall Plan scheme that rescued the economies of Europe. His six-month visit to Harvard in 1949, the first of several, was intellectually rewarding, but on his return to Britain he faced criticism from all sides for the articles his visit had inspired. This made the beginning of the new decade a low point of severe self-doubt, but it was also a turning-point. His return to All Souls in 1950 as a Research Fellow in the history of ideas opened the flood-gates, and the letters record his rapid rise to the status of an intellectual celebrity featured in gossip columns and glossy magazines. His next trip to America – to Harvard and Bryn Mawr – led to the series of radio broadcasts of late 1952 which brought him national fame. He stood for the Wardenship of All Souls in 1951, but withdrew before the final vote; he was offered, but after much agonising declined, the Wardenship of Nuffield College in 1953. His love for and knowledge of opera brought him Directorships of the Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells. His Professorship followed in 1957, as did a knighthood (accepted reluctantly and soon regretted).

Berlin published widely: a translation of Turgenev’s First Love in 1950, The Hedgehog and the Fox in 1953, Historical Inevitability in 1954, The Age of Enlightenment in 1956, and Two Concepts of Liberty in 1958, together with ‘A Marvellous Decade’ in 1955–6 and numerous other significant articles and reviews. The letters chart the often tortuous progress of Berlin’s writings to publication and his mixed reactions to the acclaim (and criticism) he received.

But these public aspects of Berlin’s life are only part of the story. The 1950s were for him years of emotional turmoil, and his sexual coming of age. His father’s death in 1953 hit him hard and precipitated his pursuit of the unhappily married Aline Halban, who became his wife in 1956. At that point his life changed overnight from that of a bachelor don living in College to that of a married man with his own home, and three stepsons. This sea-change was certainly one of the main contributors to the growing maturity of the later letters in this volume.

The range of Berlin’s correspondents in this period is even wider than in the first volume, as is the variety of subject-matter. There is a marked increase in intellectual content as the years pass, and many letters provide explanation or amplification of his published work. Others offer acute and often acid commentary on books, music, places and, above all, people. Berlin’s travels in Europe and the United States, his visits to Palestine/Israel, and his trip to the Soviet Union with his new wife in 1956 showed him the changing post-war world far beyond the confines of Oxford, and the letters record his impressions. His contacts within the political establishments of several countries give an inside view of the personalities at the heart of major political events – the creation of the State of Israel, the Suez Crisis, the Cold War. In short, his letters provide a well-informed and idiosyncratically perceptive view of the era in which they were written, as well as a window on his own intellectual development.

THE EDITORIAL CHALLENGE

Forgive me if I do not write a proper letter in answer to your splendid, spontaneous, disinterested, excellent, enjoyable, admirable one (the list of adjectives is like a parody of my own unfortunate style – there was a parody of my book in Punch recently – not very good but still, I suppose, taught me something – the sentences never ended at all, and that is the first basis of any parody of me).²

There is a marked stylistic development in Berlin’s letters as he matures. Irony begins to oust the juvenile sparkle of the earlier period. Later in this volume, too, there are some remarkable sustained set pieces untypical of his earlier style. But certain characteristics – convoluted sentences and a profusion of adjectives – remain unchanged. One significant development is his discovery in 1949 of the Dictaphone; from then on, the majority of his letters are dictated and increasingly take on the somewhat loose and baggy characteristics of his conversation. Concision did not come naturally to him, and many of his letters are of extraordinary length, covering a broad range of subjects, mingling gossip and intellectual analysis. It has been part of the editorial task to preserve this characteristic flavour as far as possible within the unavoidable process of selection.

Selection

[I]t seems to me (as it always does to authors in their delusion) that it is all indispensable and cannot be eliminated without grave loss to the sense.³

I am sure that we all have far more to gain than to lose by the publication of even indiscreet documents, which always emerge one day and then do more harm than if they were published openly, candidly and quickly.⁴

The vast number of surviving post-war letters, and their length, have led us to be far more selective for this volume than for its predecessor (and further volumes will need to follow the same pattern).⁵ This is regrettable in one way, but offers the compensatory advantage that we have been forced to concentrate on the most interesting material. The first volume contained most of the available letters until March 1946, but the amount of material amassed for the period covered here would fill four or five volumes of the same length. Reluctantly, we have abandoned the policy followed in the first volume of printing letters in their entirety, as the resulting cost in letters omitted would have been too great: many letters have instead been pruned to retain what seem to us their most interesting or important features.

Some of the excisions were straightforward: Berlin’s complex travel arrangements, endlessly made, remade, and often abandoned, are of little continuing importance, and most of the purely domestic communications with his parents have been omitted. On the many occasions when the same information was provided, or opinion expressed, to several people, we have normally reduced the duplication by choosing the fullest or most entertaining version. Nevertheless the final choice of letters or parts of letters has been far from easy. We have aimed for a fair representation of the range of Berlin’s correspondence, while not disguising the fact that certain preoccupations, such as his own perceived lack of achievement, recur (though selection exaggerates the proportion of introspection). Portraying Berlin in a good (or bad) light has not influenced us; we have been guided purely by the intrinsic interest of the material. In the (relatively few) cases where we initially differed in our choice, discussion has led to agreement, compromise or surrender. What interests one person may be less absorbing to another, but we hope that the combination of Henry Hardy’s enthusiasm for Berlin’s ideas and Jennifer Holmes’s interest in the letters as social and political history has produced a selection with wide appeal.⁶

Omissions, then, are almost all on the grounds of interest, with two exceptions. Very occasionally a letter or passage has been omitted out of consideration for the living. More important is the omission (as their recipient wished) of the large number of letters Berlin wrote to his wife Aline, mostly during 1954 and 1955, before their marriage. These show a passionate side of his nature not often on display elsewhere. We are grateful to Lady Berlin for allowing us to quote a few of their less personal passages in our editorial commentary and notes.

In a few cases items not included in the book have been posted in the Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library (the website of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust, hereafter ‘IBVL’): URLs are provided in the relevant notes. It is hoped to add considerably to the material available online in due course, so that the website will supplement the published volumes substantially.

As before, letters received by Berlin normally feature only in brief quotations, if at all. However, at the suggestion of Valerie Eliot, we have included both sides of a crucial correspondence between Berlin and T. S. Eliot about the latter’s alleged anti-Semitism.

Dating the letters

[M]y sense of time is weak.⁷

Dating the letters has not been straightforward. Berlin was notably inexact about chronology. Many letters are undated or have incomplete dates; some dates are an inconsistent combination of day of the week and date (letters written, as so many of Berlin’s were, in the early hours of the morning are particularly frequent offenders); a reference to ‘last week’ may mean several weeks earlier, while ‘tomorrow’ or even ‘in half an hour’ may mean days later. From 1949 another complication emerges: because of Berlin’s increasing reliance on dictation into a machine, the date on typed letters may be the date of dictation, the date of typing, or (apparently the most common) the date of expected signature. When abroad he sent Dictabelts back to Oxford for typing, and his secretary would type them on previously signed blank sheets of paper. Precise dating of many letters (no matter what date they bear) is therefore a chimera, and this uncertainty makes it even more difficult to establish the dates of the past or future events referred to in the letters. We have done our best.

Reading Berlin’s mind

He notices several sentences […] have been reduced to illiteracy by punctuation, quasi misprints for which his own handwriting may well be responsible, but which more careful sub-editing would perhaps have prevented.⁸

The top copies of many typed letters are a sometimes barely legible mixture of typescript and manuscript, since Berlin tended to add further thoughts to the letter presented to him for signature (when he read it through at all, which he often admitted he didn’t), sometimes as a continuation, but often as insertions into the typed text (see, e.g., 142, 536). In addition, Berlin’s frequently incomprehensible elocution could prove too much for his secretaries: typed letters are in places pitted with gaps where the typist has failed to understand the dictation. Some meaningless or amusing phrases are clearly desperate conjectures by a puzzled typist; on occasion Berlin noticed these omissions or inaccuracies and corrected them by hand on the top copy, but he could not always remember what he had dictated, so the imperfect typing may be accompanied by a manuscript commentary on its peculiarities rather than a correction. Here is one of the more intelligible products of the guessing game that Berlin’s typists had to play:

I arrived after an uneventful journey on the Queen Elizabeth, who had trouble with the running seas (This strange & beautiful sentence springs from the unconscious of my stenographer: I said “in the company of Giles Constable & the Ronnie Trees”)⁹

Manuscript letters are transcribed as Berlin wrote them, warts and all. The recipients of Berlin’s letters must have had to devote some time to making sense of them, and the occasional letter in this volume will require a certain mental agility in the reader.

Other editorial points

The preliminary matter in the first volume served to some extent for the whole series, and readers seeking a fuller background are recommended to consult it (as well as Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Berlin).¹⁰ The broad lines of editorial policy, which have remained almost entirely unchanged for this volume, are also there described in detail. But the scheme of publication tentatively sketched at L1 xvi has had to be substantially revised. The amount of irresistible material for what was to be the period covered by the second volume, 1946 to 1966 (or even 1975), was much greater than we estimated, which is why this volume finishes in 1960, and is longer, even so, than the first volume. We hope to reach at least 1975 in a third volume.

In an undertaking of this scope and complexity, errors are unfortunately inevitable. We welcome notification of those in this volume, and corrections will be posted in the IBVL (under Texts, Published work), where a list of corrections to the first volume is already to be found, together with a selection of letters from the period it covers (1928–46) that came to light too late for inclusion in the book.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Pride of place under this heading should be given to Serena Moore, who has now worked with Henry Hardy on what, in internal Wolfson College documents, is called ‘The Berlin Papers Project’ for nearly a decade. Although she is formally known as Henry Hardy’s Assistant, both editors are the daily beneficiaries of her care, courtesy, discretion, reliability, hard work, generosity and imagination; and her role has been much wider than her job title might imply. To start at the most humdrum level: the amount of paper that has built up in Henry Hardy’s office as the years go by has reached alarming proportions, and his ability to keep track of it unaided has declined correspondingly. The task of keeping everything in order, and providing signposts that enable specific items to be retrieved, requires meticulous organisation and record-keeping. Serena has created a variety of systems for this purpose, entirely on her own initiative, and has maintained them punctiliously. The importance of this sometimes mind-numbingly tedious work is hard to exaggerate: such efficiency as we achieve is entirely dependent on it. Serena has, moreover, taken over the task of following up new clues that point to further caches of Berlin’s sprawling correspondence; she also researches many of the illustrations, maintains a detailed chronology of Berlin’s movements and activities (on which the chronology in this volume draws), and helps in numerous other ways as the need arises. She spots opportunities that have escaped us, and exploits them successfully. Her dedication to the project has been of inestimable value.¹¹

Next, we once again thank the many correspondents, or their heirs and representatives, who have supplied (copies of) letters in their possession, and sometimes help in interpreting them that no one else could have provided; without their co-operation this book would not exist in its present form. Since their names appear in the index of correspondents, they are not listed again here. We are grateful to them all: even when letters do not appear in this volume, the information they contain has often been vital. Many letters are now in institutional archives, and we also record our indebtedness to the archivists who have enabled us to publish letters in their care. In this context we ought perhaps to record that we have not been able to include letters to the officers of All Souls (with the exception of John Sparrow, whose letters from IB were kept among his personal papers) because access to the College’s personal files is restricted under a 100-year rule.

Ever since this project began, in the early 1970s, it has been staffed serendipitously. No advertisement has ever been required to fill a position (including those of the present editors). Someone has always emerged when needed, and so (thus far) has the necessary remuneration, thanks to the generosity of our benefactors, to whom we are inexpressibly grateful. This providential provision may in part be a testimony to Berlin’s power to inspire his readers, but it also seems to partake of the miraculous.

The names of the main collaborators who have worked alongside us are listed at the beginning of this volume. ‘Additional research’ refers mainly to the reading, summarising and selective copying of the mass of letters and other documents in the Isaiah Berlin Papers in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, as a basis for our selection, commentary and annotation. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this time-consuming and sometimes enervating work: if we had had to do it all ourselves, this volume would have taken far longer to edit. James Chappel was the first, and extremely welcome, labourer in this vineyard: he set the standard that others have followed, and his intelligence and wit have enriched us. Brigid Allen joined him to excellent effect later, and between them they managed to keep ahead of us. Steffen Groß has most generously worked for us during part of his hard-earned breaks in Oxford from Cottbus University, and most recently Eleonora Paganini has joined in with infectious enthusiasm.

Michael Hughes’s detailed catalogue of the very extensive Berlin Papers, completed in time for work on this volume, has naturally been an indispensable tool. Michael has also answered a steady stream of questions, and organised copies of items we needed to see, saving us significant time and trouble. We are most grateful to him.

Much of the material in this volume was transcribed by Betty Colquhoun in past years, when it first became available. More recently most of the transcription has been done by Esther Johnson. Transcribing Berlin’s letters accurately, especially when they are handwritten, is very skilled work, and we are indebted to these two expert cryptographers, as we are to Myra Jones, who double-checked the transcripts against the original documents with painstaking care.

The publication of such a complex book involves numerous experts of various kinds, on whose skill and advice we have necessarily and gratefully relied. Our thanks go to them all, especially to Will Sulkin, Rowena Skelton-Wallace, Mary Gibson and their colleagues at Chatto & Windus; to Paul Luna of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading; to Peter Boswell and his staff at Deltatype Ltd; and to the indexer, Vicki Robinson.

We have received help from many other quarters, often well beyond the call of duty. We thank all those in the following list most warmly, regretting that there is not room to specify their contributions, and apologise to anyone whose assistance we have failed to record: the staff of the Bodleian Library, especially Colin Harris; the archivists of many Oxford Colleges, including Liz Baird, Judith Curthoys, Robin Darwall-Smith, Jennifer Thorp; Marcia Allentuck, Shlomo Avineri, Casey Babcock, Simon Bailey, Clare Baker, Philippa Bassett, Denison Beach, Charlotte Berry, Björn Biester, Jason Bigelow, Jo Blackadder, Rachel Bowles, Lelia Brodersen, Breda Brosnahan, Isabella Burrell, Margaret Burri, Marc Carlson, Justin Cartwright, Joshua Cherniss, Jennifer Cole, Julia Creed, Richard Davenport-Hines, Cliff Davies, Cressida Dick, Craig Dickson, Sue Donnelly, Arie Dubnov, Robert Dugdale, Clarissa Eden, Desmond FitzGerald, Jean Floud, Francesca Franchi, Tuvia Friling, Julia Gardner, John Geddes, Ruth Gibson, Susie Gilbert, Georgy Glotov, Jane Goodnight, Simon Green, Peter Halban, Colin Harris, Jenifer Hart, Jon Heal, Hanni Hermolin, Robin Hessman, Camilla Hornby, Margaret Hugh-Jones, Michael Ignatieff, Magda Jean-Louis, Carole Jones, Diane Kaplan, Ellen Kastel, Clare Kavanagh, Sharon Kelly, Meredith Kirkpatrick, Jane Knowles, Yuka Kobayashi, Marina Kozyreva, Barbara Kraft, Nicola Lacey, Thomas Lannon, Carol Leadenham, Jenny Lee, William Lorimer, Hannah Lowery, Gavin McGuffie, Patricia McGuire, Sheila Mackenzie, Ruth MacLeod, Edna Margalit, Sandra Marsh, Elizabeth Martin, Martin Maw, Giordana Mecagni, Barry Moreno, Halyna Myroniuk, Dominique Nabokov, Barbara Natanson, Penelope Newsome, Cynthia Ostroff, Sara Palmor, James Peters, David M. Phillips, Elliot Phillips, Isabella Phillips, Stephen Plotkin, Tatiana Podznyakova, Jane Potter, Amy Purdon, Wang Qian, Helen Rappaport, Lily Richards, Timothy Robbins, Dean Rogers, Dean Ryan, Joanna Ryan, Geraldine Santoro, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, Taran Schindler, Natalia Sciarini, Caroline Seebohm, Merav Segal, Ellen Shea, Joseph Sherman, Adam Sisman, Judy Skelton, Norman Solomon, Linda Stahnke, Jon Stallworthy, William Stingone, Clare Stoneman, Geoffrey Strachan, Cathy Strain, Andrew Strauss, Michel Strauss, Fiorella Superbi, the Swedish Academy, Peter Thompson, Dag Einar Thörsen, Sidney Tibbetts, Penelope Tree, Verena Onken von Trott, Levin von Trott, Patricia Utechin, Natalie Walters, Leon Wieseltier, Richard Wiley, Martin Wood, Blair Worden, Marie-Claire Wyatt, Mary Yoe. Our gratitude survives those who have died while the book was in preparation.

HENRY HARDY

JENNIFER HOLMES

CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

The format of the names, addresses and dates in the letter-headings has been standardised, and the most common addresses abbreviated according to the following list:

All Oxford colleges except New College (and Christ Church, which is not known as ‘Christ Church College’) are referred to in the notes without the word ‘College’. Information in the form ‘Balliol classics 1929–33’ indicates that the person concerned was an undergraduate reading that subject at that Oxford college during that period. Page references are not introduced with ‘p.’ or ‘pp.’ when the context makes it obvious that that is what they are. Cross references of the form ‘(256/6)’ mean ‘see page 256, note 6’.

Originals are typed unless said to be in manuscript or retrieved from Dictabelts. The location of originals is provided as part of the index of correspondents.

People and other subjects requiring a gloss are in general footnoted when they are first referred to, but not otherwise. The index will quickly locate this introductory note if it is needed in connection with a later reference. Recipients of letters are referred to by their initials in notes to letters received by them.

Listed below are the people most frequently referred to. The incomplete versions of their names in the left-hand column are not annotated except on first occurrence; rather, these names can be assumed to refer to the individuals in the right-hand column unless otherwise stated. Many but not all of these individuals, together with other important or frequently mentioned people, are subjects of the entries in the biographical glossary that precedes the indexes. These people are glossed only briefly on their first occurrence, and on that occasion an asterisk before the surname indicates that an entry is to be found in the glossary, thus: ‘Cecil Maurice *Bowra’.

Other abbreviations used follow. For publication details of books listed see http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/books/index.html.

The values of the Enlightenment, what people like Voltaire, Helvétius, Holbach, Condorcet preached, are deeply sympathetic to me. Maybe they were too narrow, and often wrong about the facts of human experience, but these people were great liberators. They liberated people from horrors, obscurantism, fanaticism, monstrous views. They were against cruelty, they were against oppression, they fought the good fight against superstition and ignorance and against a great many things which ruined people’s lives. So I am on their side.¹

THE LETTERS

I romanticize every place I come to, I find: Moscow, Oxford, Ditchley, Harvard, Washington: each is a kind of legendary world framed within its own conventions in which the characters, suffused with unnatural brightness, perform with terrific responsiveness […]¹

[…] my quest for gaiety & cosiness is a perpetual defence against the extreme sense of the abyss by which I have been affected ever since I can remember myself […]²

I am no letter writer & write as I talk, in an undisciplined, confused, almost irresponsible fashion […]³

ENTR’ACTE

The war years had been a watershed for Isaiah Berlin. His life as an Oxford don had been replaced by a key role representing the British Government in the United States; his dispatches home on the state of American opinion had attracted the attention and admiration of men of power and influence; and he had become a prestigious if unreliable catch for the society hostesses of Washington and New York. The end of the war had allowed him to revisit Russia, where he had spent part of his childhood, and to establish contact with the oppressed but still active literary world there. Forced by the post-war pressure of undergraduate numbers to delay his planned change of subject from philosophy to the history of ideas, he sailed back to England in April 1946 to resume his academic career.

TO MEYER SCHAPIRCO¹

Tuesday [9 April 1946, manuscript]

[Queen Mary,] Cunard White Star [line]

Dear Meyer,

I made the most persistent & desperate efforts to get in touch with you & see you before I finally left. I arrived in N.Y. on the 2^d April & the ship left in the early morning of the 7^th – I telephoned literally every day & got no reply at all. I did have lunch with Edm. Wilson² who told me how ill he thought of the English & French, how well of Russians & Americans. I expect in an obscure way that is why I like his writings so much, the serious 19^th century moral approach, the heavy quality of feeling, the absence of polish, elegance, & innate traditional manners & taste. Anyhow I found him very well worth talking with: shy & full of half articulated sentences gurgling upwards – he was stone sober which probably made him slightly stiff at first – later he thawed & bubbled away very agreeably – & said a lot of things. Now: when are you coming to Europe in general & Oxford in particular? I would really much rather, much much rather see you in Oxford than in N.Y. or London – you obviously must come fairly soon if only to have a look at what is left, & who is living – let me know a day or two in advance if you cannot sooner – & stay with me in Oxford as long as you like. You will find Freddie³ too there (in Wadham) & other people (here) who may interest you. I really am exceedingly sorry not to have said a proper farewell. The two last impressions I have from, rather than of, America, are Wilson’s approval of Auden’s⁴ anglophobia – terrific piece⁵ – & the fact that the real name of Borodin⁶ – the Soviet agent in China whom I met in Moscow – is Gruzenberg. I am incapable of seriousness now for at least 6 months, since I am so terribly intellectually pauperized.

Yrs

Isaiah

[…]

1946–1948

NEW COLLEGE

I AM GLOOMILY contemplating a life of grinding hackery for the next thirty years or so.¹

[Philosophy] is a dreadfully punishing fatal subject to bear a secret hatred to – & gnaws at the vitals of those whose hearts have moved elsewhere in the most destructive way.²