The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses (Paperback)

by Noel Annan (Author) "The word 'don' carries many meanings, quite a number of them ironical..." (more)
Key Phrases: civic universities, scholarship exam, Christ Church, All Souls, Second World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
For all its detached wit, The Dons is suffused with love. That it is the love for a lost or disappearing world does not make it morbid or maudlin. -- The New York Times Book Review, Garry Wills --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

For two hundred years Oxford and Cambridge Universities were home to some of Britain's greatest teachers and intellects, each forming the minds of the passing generations of students and influencing the thinking and practice of university learning throughout the country and the world.

In this entertaining, informative book, Noel Annan is at his incisive best. Displaying his customary mastery of his subject, he describes the great dons in all their glory and eccentricities: who they were, what they were like, why they mattered, and what their legacy is. Written with love and wisdom, the great minds of the past—figures such as John Henry Newman, John Sparrrow, and Isaiah Berlin—are brought alive. In addition, Annan's often quoted article "The Intellectual Aristocracy" is included in this book.

No other work has ever explained so precisely and so intimately the significance of the dons and their important role in shaping higher education—at a time when the nature of learning is ever more the subject of dissension and uncertainty.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 367 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (August 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226021084
• ISBN-13: 978-0226021089
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #467,125 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dons Displayed, January 21, 2001

By	Mika Fischer (Mount Baker, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses (Hardcover)

Annan provides memorable portraits of many Oxbridge dons, even as he shows how different from our own were the eras in which these men (and, far too belatedly, women) worked. For example, consider the following:

** The two opiates to be avoided at all costs were love of success and a preoccupation with money. Lowes Dickinson's most famous pupil was E. M. Forster, who in his novels tooks Dickinson's ideas a stage further; and he summarised the King's [College] ethos by saying that it was a place that "taught the perky boy that he was not everything and the limp boy that he might be something." **

Alas, this is not _our_ era . . .

The book is also packed with amusing quotes from the dons themselves, such as the following message from one don to another:

** On our return last night I found as I thought that a spider had crawled out of the inkstand over a piece of paper; but it turns out to be a hieroglyphic from which I so far interpreted as to perceive it was an invitation to meet some professor whose name as you wrote it looked somewhat indecent. I shall be happy to wait on you and take the opportunity of learning the Eyptian mode of writing. **

Annan's book is ultimately an elegy because Margaret Thatcher, among others, did so much to ruin the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.