PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia; there in 1917, in Petrograd, he witnessed both Revolutions – Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents came to England, and he was educated at St Paul’s School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Oxford he was a Fellow of All Souls, a Fellow of New College, Professor of Social and Political Theory, and founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. In addition to Personal Impressions, his main published works are Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in the Romantic Age. As an exponent of the history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997. Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlin’s Literary Trustees. He has edited (or co-edited) many other books by Berlin, including the first three of four volumes of his letters, and is currently working on the remaining volume with Mark Pottle. Hermione Lee is President of Wolfson College, Oxford, Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Wolfson, and Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at Oxford. Her books include biographies of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and, most recently, Penelope Fitzgerald. The career of Lord Annan (1916–2000) reflects a lifelong dedi cation to education and the arts. He was Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, Provost of University College London and Vice-Chancellor of the University of London. He was also Chairman of the Trustees of the National Gallery, a Trustee of the British Museum, and a Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. His books include Leslie Stephen, Our Age and The Dons. For further information about Isaiah Berlin visit ‹http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/› Also by Isaiah Berlin * Karl Marx The Hedgehog and the Fox The Age of Enlightenment Russian Thinkers Concepts and Categories Against the Current The Crooked Timber of Humanity The Sense of Reality The Proper Study of Mankind The Roots of Romanticism The Power of Ideas Three Critics of the Enlightenment Freedom and Its Betrayal Liberty The Soviet Mind Political Ideas in the Romantic Age with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska Unfinished Dialogue * Flourishing: Letters 1928– 1946 Enlightening: Letters 1946– 1960 Building: Letters 1960– 1975 PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS • Isaiah Berlin Edited by Henry Hardy Afterword by Noel Annan Third Edition Foreword by Hermione Lee Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford Published in the United States of America, its Colonies and Dependencies, the Philippine Islands and Canada by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press press.princeton.edu First edition published by the Hogarth Press 1980 and by the Viking Press 1981 Second edition published by Pimlico and Princeton University Press 1998 Third edition published by Princeton University Press 2014 Copyright Isaiah Berlin 1949, 1953, 1955 © Isaiah Berlin 1958, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 © The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2014 This selection and editorial matter © Henry Hardy 1980, 1998, 2014 Foreword © Princeton University Press 2014 Afterword © Noel Annan 1980, 1998 The moral right of Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy to be identified as the author and editor respectively of this work has been asserted All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-15770-2 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro Printed on acid-free paper ♾ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 To the memory of Geoffrey Wilkinson 1921–1996 CONTENTS List of Illustrations xi Foreword by Hermione Lee xv Author’s Preface to the First Edition xxxi Editor’s Preface xxxv Winston Churchill in 1940 1 Hubert Henderson at All Souls 30 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 37 Richard Pares 50 Chaim Weizmann 57 Felix Frankfurter at Oxford 97 Aldous Huxley 108 L. B. Namier 121 Maurice Bowra 148 J. L. Austin and the Early Beginnings of Oxford Philosophy 156 John Petrov Plamenatz 177 Auberon Herbert 187 Einstein and Israel 195 Where Was I? 211