An Illustrated talk: In Search of Isaiah Berlin: A Literary Adventure

Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the XX century – a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of freedom and variety was passionate and persuasive and has been an inspiration to many. The prescience and vitality of his ideas – especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism – are increasingly evident in today’s world. But who was the man behind such influential views?

Henry Hardy, Berlin’s decades-long editor and collaborator, has written an intimate, revealing and a moving portrait of the self-deprecating philosopher, and will be elaborating on it at this event.

Henry Hardy met Berlin in 1972 as a graduate student at Wolfson College, Oxford, of which Berlinwas the founding President. Dr. Hardy’s publishing career has included thirteen years as an editor at Oxford University Press. He has worked as Berlin’s editor for the last 45 years, publishing 18 volumes of Berlin’s work, and a four- volume edition of his letters. He is now an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, and a trustee of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust.

Peter Oppenheimer is a retired Oxford University Economics Don, a Russianist and former President (2000-2008) of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He and a number of his in-laws were long-standing friends of Sir Isaiah Berlin. A unique portrait of a man who gave us a new way of thinking about the human predicament, yet most of whose work for the whole of his life remained largely unsorted, out of circulation and unprinted.