Table of Contents

Introduction: The Question of Intellectuals
Part One: The Terms of the Question
1: The History of a Word
2: A Matter of Definition
Part Two: Fonder Hearts
3: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
4: Of Light and Leading
5: Highbrows and Other Aliens
6: The Long 1950s I: Happy Families
7: The Long 1950s II: Brave Causes
8: From New Left to Old Chestnut
Part Three: Comparative Perspectives
9: In their Natonal Habitat
10: Greener Grass: Letters from America
11: The Peculiarities of the French
12: The Translation of the Clerks
Part Four: Some Versions of Denial
13: Clerisy or Undesirables: T. S. Eliot
14: Professional Cackling: R. G. Collingwood
15: Other People: George Orwell
16: Nothing to Say: A. J. P. Taylor
17: No True Answers: A. J. Ayer
Part Five: Repeat Performances
18: Outsider Studies: The Glamour of Dissent
19: Media Studies: A Discourse of General Ideas
20: Long Views I: Specialization and its Discontents
21: Long Views II: From Authority to Celebrity?
Epilogue: No Elsewhere

About the Author

Stefan Collini is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Clare Hall. A frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, and other periodicals both in Britain and the USA, his previous books include Public Moralists (1991), Matthew Arnold: a Critical Portrait (1994), and English Pasts (1999). He is a Fellow of both the
British Academy and the Royal Historical Society.

Reviews

`Review from previous edition Stefan Collini's Absent Minds provided an intriguing analysis of the question of intellectuals in Britian during the twentieth century...a superb, well-writtian book with few discernible flaws...Collini has tackled a complex subject in an imaginative and compelling fashion, and Absent Minds will only enhance his reputation as the leading schloar of British intellectual history.'
Michael D. Stevenson russel:the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies
`Complex and challenging work.'
Times Higher Education Supplement
`Absent Minds is a tour de force by a scholar and critic at the height of his powers'
James Wilsdon, Financial Times
`Absent Minds is an intriguing, sometimes illuminating, book written with elegance and elan.'
David Stack, The English Historical Review
`Stefan Collini promises a panoramic view of British intellectuals in the 20th century ... with contemporary disquisitions on "media studies" and celebrity. Collini is expert at the urbane insertion of a dagger: Should be provocative fun.'
Steven Poole, The Guardian
`Collini should be praised for his rigour and integrity....Absent Minds is a provocative and impressive read.'
Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph
`This magnificently perceptive survey of the British intellectual caste will prove hard to outstrip as the definitive account of its subject'
Terry Eagleton, New Statesman, reprinted in Guardian
`a frequently brilliant survey'
Mark Bostridge, Independent on Sunday
`As a history of thinking about intellectuals, Absent Minds is a valuable study'
Kenan Malik, Sunday Telegraph
`...a splendidly challenging book'
Bernard Bergonzi, The Tablet
`clever and entertaining revisionist history....Absent Minds brilliantly exemplifies the sort of human, intelligent and accessible critique he so eloquently advocates'
Michael Saler, TLS
`...splendid new book...'
Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
`...[a] magisterial study...Collini is a skilled portraitist and provides us with some judicious, vividly detailed cameos of such figures as Collingwood, T S Eliot, Orwell, A J P Taylor and Freddie Ayer...this magnificently perceptive survey of the British intellectual caste, with a handful of French and American thinkers thrown in for good measure, will prove hard to outstrip as the definitive account of its subject. ,,,It is a stylish, finely analytical
study... his literary style combines journalism with erudition, in the best manner of the tradition he investigates... it is a superb distillation of several decades of research and reflection.... this
magnificently perceptive survey of the British intellectual caste, with a handful of French and American thinkers thrown in for good measure, will prove hard to outstrip as the definitive account of its subject.'
Terry Eagleton, New Statesman
`Absent Minds is first rate...immensely authoritative'
Winston Fletcher, THES
`a rich, subtle and complex book, which is a constant stimulus to thought...full of witty phrases'
Robert Skidelsky, Prospect