Twilight of the Dons: British Intellectuals from World War II to Thatcherism

The rise to power and eventual fall from grace of the Oxbridge intellectualAfter 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 i