Books, Arts & Manners

Our Age: English Intellectuals between the Wars—A Group Portrait, by Noel Annan (Random House, 479 pp., $30)

LIONEL TRILLING once wrote a review of George Santayana’s letters entitled “That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think.” The drama of Our Age by Noel Annan—now a life peer, Lord Annan—resides in the tension between the essential smugness of the book and its haunting sense of that smile of Parmenides. Were we, the “Our” of the title, the best and brightest of the Oxbridge and LSE graduates, who went to university after World War I, served in World War II, and rose to power with the Labor governments, who imposed our moral and aesthetic tastes upon English culture . . . were we fundamentally wrong?

About the Author

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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Our Age: English Intellectuals between the Wars—A Group Portrait, by Noel Annan (Random House, 479 pp., $30)

LIONEL TRILLING once wrote a review of George Santayana’s letters entitled “That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think.” The drama of Our Age by Noel Annan—now a life peer, Lord Annan—resides in the tension between the essential smugness of the book and its haunting sense of that smile of Parmenides. Were we, the “Our” of the title, the best and brightest of the Oxbridge and LSE graduates, who went to university after World War I, served in World War II, and rose to power with the Labor governments, who imposed our moral and aesthetic tastes upon English culture . . . were we fundamentally wrong?