The first full-length account of "the question of intellectuals" in twentieth-century Britain. Leading intellectual historian and cultural commentator Stefan Collini challenges the myth that there are no "real" intellectuals in Britain and offers a persuasive analysis of 'the intellectual' as a concept as well as detailed discussions of influential figures such as T.S. Eliot, George Orwell, and Edward Said.

Modern British intellectual history has been a particularly flourishing field of enquiry in recent years, and these two tightly integrated volumes contain major new essays by almost all of its leading proponents. The contributors examine the history of British ideas over the past two centuries from a number of perspectives that together constitute a major new overview of the subject. History, Religion, and Culture begins with eighteenth-century historiography, especially Gibbon's Decline and Fall. It takes up different aspects of the place of religion in nineteenth-century cultural and...

Modern British intellectual history has been a particularly flourishing field of enquiry in recent years, and these two tightly integrated volumes contain major new essays by almost all of its leading proponents. The contributors examine the history of British ideas over the past two centuries from a number of perspectives that together constitute a major new overview of the subject. History, Religion, and Culture begins with eighteenth-century historiography, especially Gibbon's Decline and Fall. It takes up different aspects of the place of religion in nineteenth-century cultural and...

Economy, Polity and Society and its companion volume History, Religion and Culture aim to bring together new essays by many of the leading intellectual historians of the period. The essays in Economy, Polity and Society begin by addressing aspects of the eighteenth-century attempt, particularly in the work of Adam Smith, to come to grips with the nature of "commercial society" and its distinctive notions of the self, of political liberty, and of economic progress. They then explore the adaptations of and responses to the Enlightenment legacy in the work of such early nineteenth-century...

Economy, Polity and Society and its companion volume History, Religion and Culture aim to bring together new essays by many of the leading intellectual historians of the period. The essays in Economy, Polity and Society begin by addressing aspects of the eighteenth-century attempt, particularly in the work of Adam Smith, to come to grips with the nature of "commercial society" and its distinctive notions of the self, of political liberty, and of economic progress. They then explore the adaptations of and responses to the Enlightenment legacy in the work of such early nineteenth-century...