Isaiah Berlin, who died a few years ago at the age of 89, was in my view the most distinguished political philosopher and historian of ideas of the 20th century. There is no thinker whose work, expressed in the most beautiful and lucid English prose, I read with greater pleasure and whose ideas so convince me that they are fundamentally right.
If I had to choose a single book to advise any young person interested in ideas to read it would be Isaiah Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty which consists of a magnificent introduction, alone worth its weight in intellectual gold, and essays on Political Ideas in the 20th Century, Historical Inevitability, Two Concepts of Liberty and John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life. After the excitement and hurly-burly of the election campaign and election and as the government we have chosen starts anew get a copy of this great book and go into a quiet room and read it and learn how men should aim to live together in society.
And when you have the time go on and read Berlin’s other works – essays collected in, among other books, Russian Tinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions and The Crooked Timber of Humanity. I will be surprised if you do not come out of
