Raymond Williams [Hardcover]

Fred Inglis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415089603 | ISBN-13: 978-0415089609 | Publication Date: November 28, 1995 | Edition: First Edition

In his life, Raymond Williams played many parts: child of the Black Mountains, inspirational adult lecturer, Cambridge professor, folk hero and guru of the left. After his death, he has remained a symbolic figure and his classic works, Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, The Country and the City continue to inspire new generations all over the world.
In this first major biography, Fred Inglis has spoken to those who knew this complex and charismatic man at every stage of his life, from his boyhood in the Welsh border country to his brief years of retirement. Through their voices and his own passionate stories and at times combative engagement with his subject, he tells of a story of a life not just for its time but for our own. After Thatcher and Reagan and the Cold War, Williams still has much to teach us about the nature of a good and just society and about the constant struggle to attain it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...the book is distinguished above all by Inglis's writerly energy, here essaying a novelistic sketch, there interjecting a remembered vignette; it is a prose not afraid of trying the high leap and pirouette...while at the same time willing to let a demotic gruffness do the work of moral commentary.
–Dissent

With brio, passion, wisdom and occasional reservations, Inglis introduces us to and evaluates Raymond Williams, the man and the icon, the brilliant cultural-political theorist, the muted social activist, the minor novelist, the compromiser and conscience of the left.
–Victor Navasky, Publisher, The Nation

Raymond Williams has found the right biographer. Like Williams himself, Fred Inglis is both warm-hearted and discriminating; his new book is a reliable and entertaining guide to the life and thought of one of the most interesting writers of our time.
–Brian Morton, Executive Editor, Dissent

Raymond Williams was one of the greatest Socialist thinkers of his generation who exercised a huge influence among his contemporaries, and will be remembered long after many of those who held high office, over the same period, are forgotten. Fred Inglis' massive, scholarly and sensitive biography will extend an understanding of Raymond Williams' life and work to future generations who did not have the privilege of knowing him. This book will stand as a monument to his contribution to political thought.
–Tony Benn

Inglis has not only written a wonderfully lucid, sympathetic, intelligent and good-humored account of the life and works of his hero, Raymond Williams, he has also done much in these ahistorical times to remind his readers of the enduring strengths (and the recurrent failures) of British romantic socialism. This is biography with a political purpose and all the better for it.
–Laurie Taylor

About the Author

Fred Inglis, after military services in the Parachute Regime, read English at Cambridge, became a school teacher and then a university teacher. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, PRinceton, and a Visting Fellow at the Australian National University. A lifelong member of the Labour Party, he has been their parliamentary candidate in four General Elections, and was a senior officer in CND for seven years in the 1980s. He is now Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. His books include Popular Culture and Political Power, Media Theory, and The Cruel Peace: Everyday Life and the Cold War: Cultural Studies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; First Edition edition (November 28, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415089603
• ISBN-13: 978-0415089609
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,524,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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