Serena Moore thinks he was ‘subtly handicapped’ by an ‘undeveloped response to women’. An only child, devoted to his possessive parents, he remained a virgin till over 40. And his first full encounter was an accident. Driving himself furiously, especially in social life, his late hours often led to a bout of exhaustion, when he would take to his bed. On one such occasion, he was visited by Jennifer Hart, wife of the Brasenose philosophy professor. She quickly slipped between the sheets, and that was that. Later he ran off (if that is not too energetic an expression) with another professorial wife, and married her.

As these wonderful epistles (some of many thousand words) show, Berlin was a great entertainer in academic showbiz. He was so because he knew so much. He loved knowledge. He could say with Dr Johnson, ‘There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it, than not.’ Once, lecturing to a North London audience on Jewish history, I was astonished to see Berlin in the front row, eager, attentive, his face uplifted, eyes alight. He was prepared to learn even from me. He conveyed his vast knowledge with grace and wit. In a snatched moment in the Gare de Lyon, Paris, he wrote: ‘In the end nobody … will quite know what to say about me; did I produce anything worthwhile, ever?’ The answer lies in this hefty tome of letters, with more to follow, thanks be to God. 

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