Liberty: Incorporating "Four Essays on Liberty"

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In the year that Isaiah Berlin died, I was invited by The Times Higher Education Supplement to contribute to their 'Speaking Volumes' series, in which readers write briefly about the book that has influenced them most. I had no hesitation in choosing Berlin's Four Essays on Liberty, which not only bowled me over when I first read it, but also set me on course towards becoming Berlin's editor, and so led, thirty years on, to the publication of this expanded edition of the book.

My THES piece was written just before Berlin's death, and published shortly thereafter.2 Part of what I said seems to me to bear repeating in the present context:

I had no idea when I joined Oxford's Wolfson College as a graduate student in 1972 that I was about to discover my eventual occupation. The College's President was Isaiah Berlin. It was clear as soon as I met him (at a scholarship interview for which I arrived late after a car accident, and during which he repeatedly went to the window to see if a taxi had arrived to take him to a lunch appointment) that he was a remarkable man; but I had never read any of his work, and knew next to nothing about him.

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