Who are the big intellectuals today? There are academics, to be sure, each with their speciality, and journalists, ditto. When something comes up the BBC will call on them to pontificate, to explain, but only on their speciality. Off their own piste they are no more valuable than a saloon-bar or dinner-party bore, eager to tell you ‘what I always say’. I don’t exempt myself.
Tony Judt, now a professor at New York University, is the rare real thing, the author of 11 books on Marxism and French intellectuals, European resistance and revolution, language in a multi-state world; he is to consider what has happened in post-war Britain, the US, Israel and France.
In this book, a collection of previously published essays grouped by themes, he looks closely at some of the big minds of the 20th century — Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Primo Levi and Edward Said (who reads them now?) and weighs up their values.
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