Twilight of the dons : British intellectuals from World War II to Thatcherism / Colin Kidd.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kidd, Colin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

University of Cambridge--Alumni and alumnae--Political activity.

University of Cambridge.

University of Oxford--Alumni and alumnae--Political activity.

University of Oxford.

Intellectuals--Political activity--England.

Intellectuals.

Great Britain--Politics and government--1945-.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--1945-.

Intellectuals--Political activity.

England.

Physical Description:

ix, 271 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2026]

Summary:

"After World War II, the academics of Oxford and Cambridge--the dons--formed an unusual kind of university-based, establishment-connected intelligentsia. Unlike intellectuals in other countries, often anti-establishment outsiders, the dons of Oxbridge enjoyed secure and even cosy connections with those in power. In Twilight of the Dons, Colin Kidd examines the golden age of Britain’s Oxford- and Cambridge-based intellectual elites--and how their influence waned when Oxbridge’s links to the establishment began to fray. Kidd explores a series of episodes and themes that range from the dons’ confrontations with student protesters in the 1960s to their reaction to the rise of Thatcherism in the 1980s. The cast of characters includes many of twentieth-century Britain’s most famous intellectuals--Elizabeth Anscombe, Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Leach, J. H. Plumb and Hugh Trevor-Roper, to name just a few. Kidd describes the multiple important roles played by dons in World War II, the countercultural force of convert Catholicism and the strange phenomenon of Tory Marxism. He examines the dons’ attitudes towards America and France--as seen in their engagement in the debates over the Kennedy assassination and the awkward reception of Lévi-Strauss’s anthropology. When Oxbridge came under assault, it was first by a modernising, technocratic Left in the early 1960s, then by student radicals in the late 1960s and finally by the Thatcherite Right--in whose rise, Kidd shows, some dons were complicit. As deference to Oxbridge intelligentsia declined, a reassessment of the place of dons in British public life began."-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Includes bibliograpbical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Kidd, Colin. Twilight of the dons.

ISBN:

9780691188768

0691188769

OCLC:

1535770383

Publisher Number:

CIPO000345292