Stefan Collini is the author of Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, What Are Universities For? and The Nostalgic Imagination: History in English Criticism. His edition of Orwell’s Selected Essays was published in 2021. He is an emeritus professor of intellectual history and English literature at Cambridge.
Anthony Wilks's film traces the connections between the events of Eric Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s...
Stefan Collini talks to Thomas Jones about the life and work of Frank Kermode, and Mary-Kay Wilmers remembers him as a contributor to the LRB.
Reading an Empson essay is like being taken for a drive by an eccentric uncle in a terrifyingly powerful old banger. There are disturbing stains on the upholstery and an alarming whiff of whisky in the...
George Orwell is commonly invoked as the ideal role model for the intellectual: feisty, independent, outspoken and contrarian, active in the public sphere, and famous. So it’s a surprise to...
In seven of the nine chapters in this fine book Dr Collini depicts the denizens of the Athenaeum in its great days. T.H. Huxley, having left his umbrella at Matthew Arnold’s, asks his...
Time was when Clio had a seamless garment: but that was before the division of labour set in. Prefixless history is now condescendingly thought of as ‘straight’ history and her...
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