Michael Burleigh
No Pointy-Heads Here?
Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain
By Stefan Collini
Oxford University Press 536pp £25
Stefan Collini is what might be called ‘an academic’s academic’, although he clearly aspires to a larger role in ‘the culture’. He has written a couple of moderately diverting books on intellectual history, and a potted biography of Matthew Arnold. These modest achievements (and a lot of academic journalism) have enabled him to clamber up the first few rungs of being what the Americans call a ‘public intellectual’ while going through the (relatively undemanding) hoops of an academic career in a country where chairs are dished out like long-service medals on the railways. To counter donnish accidie, Collini pontificates about the state of British culture, or the fitfully cognate plight of the nation’s universities, in such journals as the LRB or Prospect. Judging by these wordy efforts, there may be a bit of a climb ahead if he is aiming for public recognition as distinct from the plaudits of academe.
Collini is known, at any rate around Cambridge, to be an elegant inserter of knives – some achievement in a university where there are more bitches than in a dog pound. Of course, as a representative of the ‘Left university’, he is scrupulous over where he sticks his knives. Encounter
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm