Interviews Conducted by Michael Ignatieff for His Biography of Berlin
No part of these recordings should be posted elsewhere without permission from the Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust, who own the copyright in the interviews with IB, or from the literary heirs of the other interviewees, who jointly own the copyright in those interviews, and who kindly gave permission to include on this site the material they control (with the one exception noted at the foot of this page).
The recordings of most interviews are linked to from their number. The original recordings were made on analogue cassette tapes. Where both sides of a cassette were used, and separately digitised, the digitised files are identified as A and B. The quality of the recordings is variable and sometimes very poor. Imperfect transcripts are here. From time to time corrections are made in the transcripts, which may affect their pagination, and make published references inaccurate.
A. Interviews with Berlin
1 | 20 October 1988
- Family origins
- Jewishness and Hasidism (see also 3)
- Pale legislation
- Andreapol' 1915
- Zionism (see also 2)
- Namier
2 | 20 October 1988
- Mother and father
- Zionism (see also 1)
- Petersburg 1916–20
- February and October Revolutions
- Departure for Latvia
- Emigration
- Surbiton
- Learning English
- Kosher
3 | 27 September 1990
- Petrograd
- Riga (see also 2, 11, 24)
- Emigration to England 1921
- Hasidism (see also 1)
- British Establishment
- Noel Annan
- Order of Trembling Amateur Gentiles
4A | 4B | 27 October 1988
- Surbiton
- St Paul’s (see also 5)
- Bar mitzvah
- Upper Addison Gardens
- Schoolboy reading
- Spengler, Tolstoy
- Sexual inhibition
- Mother/father, Jewishness and adaptation to England (see also 1, 8, 16, 17)
- Knighthood, OM (see also 28)
5A | 5B | 18 March 1989
- St Paul’s (see also 4)
- CCC
- Frank Hardie
- New College
- Richard Crossman (see also 10), Harold Wilson
- Oxford philosophy (see also 6)
- J L Austin (see also 6)
- Louis MacNeice
- Laski, Tawney, Cole
- George Kennan
- Harvard 1949
6A | 6B | 30 November 1988
- Oxford 1928–34
- Thatcher
- Reagan
- Self-confidence
- Lecturing technique
- Oxford philosophy (see also 5): Ayer and Austin
- Rachmilevich
- Writing Marx (see also 8)
7A | 7B | 8 February 1994
- Burgess (see also 12), Maclean 1934–56
- Washington 1940 (see also 20, 22, 24)
- Alsop
- 1929 drunk at Corpus
8 | 14 December 1988
- All Souls 1934–8
- New College 1938
- Appeasement, Fascism, Stalinism
- The Abdication
- Writing Marx (see also 6)
- Salzburg, Munich
- Namier
- Jewishness (see also 1, 4, 16, 17)
9 | 23 December 1994
- Auden
- Spender
- Virginia Woolf
- Bowra
10A | 10B | 13 December 1988
- New College
- Richard Crossman (see also 5)
- Election to All Souls
- Adam von Trott
- Palestine visit 1934 (see also 11)
- Holocaust
- 1928–38
See also 20 for more on Oxford in the 1930s
11A | 11B | 18 June 1989
- Salzburg 1930s
- Music: Toscanini, Walter, Chaliapin, Callas
- Palestine visit 1934 (see also 10)
- Meeting the Stern Gang
- Eden, Potsdam August 1945
- Leaving Latvia 1921 (see also 2, 3, 24)
12A | 12B | 12 March 1994
- 1946
- 1930s
- Patricia Douglas
- Penelope Felkin
- Clarissa Churchill
- Michael Corley
- David Hume’s influence
- Intellectual development 1930s
- Hearties and aesthetes 1920s
- Burgess
- Jenifer Hart and Communism
- Christopher Hill and Communism
13 | 7 May 1991
- Elizabeth Bowen
- T S Eliot
- Lindemann
- Hans Halban
- First Love
- Gertrude Stein
- Einstein
- Nicolas Nabokov
14A | 14B | 4 January 1989
- Love life 1938–56
15A | 15B | 7 March 1990
- 1940–50
- Oakeshott
- Cowling
- English Conservatism
- Wittgenstein 1940
- David Cecil
16 | 23 March 1989
- Jewishness 1939–53 (see also 1, 4, 8, 17)
- Zionism
- Weizmann
- Ben-Gurion
- ‘Jewish Slavery and Emancipation’
17 | 10 January 1997
Not an interview: an explanatory monologue for MI
- Jewishness (see also 1, 4, 8, 16)
18A | 18B | 5 April 1989
- Israel, Jews, Palestine 1942–9
- Anti-Semitism in the FO
- Wartime policy towards Palestine
- Weizmann
- Job offers in Israel
- Yitzhak Sadeh
- Visit to Israel 1947
19 | 5 July 1994
- Weizmanns
- Hannah Arendt
20A | 20B | 30 January 1989
- Oxford 1930s
- New York, Washington 1941–6 (see also 7, 22, 24)
- Churchill
- Irving Berlin
- Jews and the Holocaust
- Contacts with the Soviets
21A | 21B | 30 January 1989
- Beaverbrook
- Potsdam
- Moscow 1945
22A | 22B | 11 October 1989
- Stuart Hampshire
- Roger Scruton
- Anti-Semitism
- Father’s memoir, early Jewish experience and Hasidic origins (see also 1, 4, 8, 16, 17)
- Washington (see also 7, 20, 24)
- Diana Cooper
- Meeting with Freud
23A | 23B | 29 April 1989
- George Steiner
- Susan Sontag
- E H Carr, Isaac Deutscher
- Historical Inevitability
- Two Concepts
- Arthur Schlesinger
- Kennedy and the White House
- Ayer and Hickory Hill
24A | 24B | 5 June 1994
- Riga (see also 2, 3, 11)/The Pale of Settlement
- Yiddish/German/Russian: mother’s languages
- Keynes
- Anti-Semitism
- Washington (see also 7, 20, 22)
- The Creative Burst 1951–65
- Wolfson (see also 27)
- Akhmatova
25 | 21 February 1989
- Akhmatova tape
- Paskernak
- Moscow 1945
26 | 29 November 1989
- Russian liberalism v. Western liberalism
- Slavophiles and Westernisers
- Dangers of revolutionary change
- Milukov
- Chekhov
- Turgenev
- Herzen
- Chicherin
- Intellectuals, Church and state
- Gorbachev
27A | 27B | 18 May 1989
- Illnesses in 1980s
- Wolfson College 1965–77 (see also 24)
- All Souls Election 1951
- Chichele chair: reasons for giving it up
- Attitudes towards politics and political theory
28A | 28B | 13 April 1989
- Knighthood (see also 4)
- OM (see also 4)
- Peerage declined
- Mother’s later years and death
- Gorbachev
- Mrs Thatcher
29 | 8 November 1989
- The revolutions of 1989
- Prospects for Eastern Europe
- Pluralism, relativism and ethics
- Kant
30 | 8 June 1989
- 80th birthday
- Attitudes to publicity
- Attitudes to own reputation
- Commitment and liberalism
- Romanticism
- Scruton
31 | 21 July 1989
- 80th birthday
32 | 1 November 1990
- The Crooked Timber of Humanity
33 | 29 April 1991
- Tutorial on The Crooked Timber of Humanity
B. Interviews with others
| Interviewee | Date | ||
| B1 | Aline Berlin | 20 November 1989 | [The recording is unavailable.] | B2 | Mary Bennett | 1 February 1994 |
| B3 | Shiela Sokolov Grant | 20 November 1989 | |
| B4 | Stuart Hampshire | 20 November 1989 | |
| B5A | B5B | Jenifer and Herbert Hart (part1) | 7 November 1989 | |
| B6A | B6B | Jenifer and Herbert Hart (part 2) | 7 November 1989 | |
| B7A | B7B | William Hayter | 28 April 1994 | |
| B8A | Stephen Spender (side A) | 16 October 1989 | |
| B8B | Stephen Spender (side B) | 16 October 1989 | |
| B9A | Bernard Williams (part 1, side A) | 21 November 1990 | |
| B9B | Bernard Williams (part 1, side B) | 21 November 1990 | |
| B10 | Bernard Williams (part 2) | 21 November 1990 |