Building: Letters, 1960–1975, by Isaiah Berlin

This is the third volume of Isaiah Berlin letters; one more to go. Discerning critics have showered the first two with praise, and there is no absence of the laudable here. The plums are unforgettable, especially the brief character studies of Maurice Bowra, Enid Starkie, Randolph Churchill, Golda Meir and Stravinsky, should anyone want to know who and what these people were. Of course, Isaiah himself is the centre of attention, and a growing number of people have never heard of him.

Those who met him in this period met an intellectual superstar, a celebrity courted by princes, politicians and plutocrats, thirsting for his company and his approval. Not so many philosophers — but, my! he was a big orange. Many of those taught by him were changed for life.

He opened up the ways to wisdom by bestowing both glamour and correct pronunciation on the Russian intelligentsia under the tsars; by quizzing the German philosophers from Heine’s point of view rather than the Marxist; and by presenting the Enlightenment as a brilliant nursery where infant prodigies played with dangerous toys.

After one of Isaiah’s lectures we felt that we owned a box at the opera. The mediocrity of our actual lives, the pale hue of our thoughts, had evaporated. He was a wizard; we flew to the enchanter. He was a magus (Robert Robinson); we were dazzled by the exuberance of his verbosity. These letters do nothing to dispel the magic, though some complain that writing to many correspondents took up so much of his time that he was unable to settle down and write a big book.

But what about? asked his critics. Not philosophy; he admitted his inability to perform what he so cleverly expounded. Not proper history, based on archives and patient drudgery. Not political theory, however lucid his work on the theories of others.