The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 2

Reviews / Votes

'These are not mere selection of letters; they are letters expertly chosen and brillantly annotated, with a running commentary situating each one in the complex circumstances of Russell's life...nothing else written about Russell's life, including recent biographies, comes near it in value...a remarkable document about a remarkable life.' - Literary Review, April 2001

'Pray silence for the sage of Plas Penrhyn - possibly the most celebrated English intellectual of the 20th century. At times one feels that if Russell had not existed, Nancy Mitford or Evelyn Waugh would have had to invent him.' - The Times

With the publication of the second volume of The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin has completed a work of impressive scholarship. - Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 'Pray silence for the sage of Plas Penrhyn - possibly the most celebrated English intellectual of the 20th century. At times one feels that if Russell had not existed, Nancy Mitford or Evelyn Waugh would have had to invent him.' - The Times

'Immaculate edition ... If the centaur's hooves beat thunderously in these pages, they are also the echo of a passionate intellect at once destructive and creative, suffering and asured, whether in a Cambridge college or Brixton jail.' - The Guardian

'These are not mere selection of letters; they are letters expertly chosen and brillantly annotated, with a running commentary situating each one in the complex circumstances of Russell's life...nothing else written about Russell's life, including recent biographies, comes near it in value...a remarkable document about a remarkable life.' - Literary Review, April 2001

'Often, Booker Prize judges are shockingly disparaged. Having been one myself, I think I can vouch for their honesty. But how, this year, did they fail to recognise the genius of Melvyn Bragg's A Son of War ... And, if you overlooked it in the anti-liberal deluge, The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years 1914-1970 (Routledge GBP25, pp704), edited by Nicholas Griffin. On almost every page the old boy scatters his enemies with a single swipe.' - Michael Foot, Observer Books of the Year