Common Reading

Part One: Writing Lives 1: On not getting on with it: the criticism of Cyril Connolly 2: Rolling it out: V. S. Pritchett's writing life 3: The Great Seer: Aldous Huxley's visions 4: Performance: the critical authority of Rebecca West 5: Man of letters as hero: the energy of Edmund Wilson 6: Plain speaking: the lives of George Orwell 7: Believing in oneself: the career of Stephen Spender 8: Smacking: the letters of William Empson 9: Disappointment: A. L. Rowse in his diaries 10: Believing in England: Arthur Bryant, historian as man of letters 11: Believing in history: Herbert Butterfield, Christian and Whig 12: The intellectual as realist: the puzzling career of E. H. Carr 13: Enduring passion: E. H. Thompson's reputation 14: Olympian universalism: Perry Anderson as essayist 15: Hegel in green wellies: Roger Scruton's England Part Two: Reading Matters 16: 'The Great Age': the idealizing of Victorian culture 17: Always dying: the idea of the general periodical 18: Boomster and the Quack: the author as celebrity 19: Private reading: the autodidact public 20: The completest mode: the literary critic as hero 21: From deference to diversity: 'culture' in Britain 1945-2000 22: Well connected: biography and intellectual elites 23: National lives: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 24: HiEdBiz: universities and their publics References Acknowledgements Index