Corrections to the second edition (2023) of Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life
As the first biographer who used the Isaiah Berlin Papers, before they were deposited in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where they were catalogued and foliated, and before the four-volume edition of Berlin’s letters (2004–15) had appeared, Michael Ignatieff did not have ready access to all the sources that he would have been able to use had he been starting afresh once this process had been completed; he was also under pressure to complete his task within a short time after Berlin’s death on 5 November 1997. The first edition of his biography was therefore considerably revised for its second, updated edition (2023).
In order that students of Berlin should not be misled or travel up blind alleys in the twenty-five years intervening between the two editions, a web page was established to list selected corrections of or additions to the first edition. Much of this list is preserved here, for the benefit of those still using the first edition.
The second edition incorporated all the information provided on that web page, adding references to the Isaiah Berlin Papers and the published letters, as well as to other publications that appeared after the first edition went to press. Any errors that come to light after the second edition goes to press will be listed below. If anyone can provide a source for any of the untraced quotations (some of which may come from untranscribed conversations), the webmaster will be grateful to be notified.
Corrections
| Page | Line/note | For | Read |
| 147 | 12 | men. All | men. No good to you and me. All |
| 12–13 | No good for the likes of me. | [delete] | |
| 17 | make a difference | do a great deal of good | |
| 17–18 | It would make no difference at all | No | |
| 18 | replied | replied, ‘they would not read The Times.’ | |
| 249 | 2 | ‘the one big thing’ | the ‘one big thing’ |
| 276 | 11 up | ‘romantic’ | ‘Romantic’ |
| 394 | note 36 | 158 | 158v |
Supplementary notes
| Page | Line | Text | Note |
| 37 | 8 | two.’ | MI/IV IB, ‘The Making of a Hedgehog’ (ch. 19, note 25), broadcast 14.11.97. |
| 57 | 12–11 up | ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’ | Lady Caroline Lamb’s first impression of Byron. Originally recorded by Lady (Sydney) Morgan as ‘mad – bad – and dangerous to know’: Lady Morgan’s Memoirs: Autobiography, Diaries and Correspondence (London, 1862), vol. 2, 200. |
| 58 | 13 up | ‘roaring in a voice with the carrying power of the Last Trump’ | Untraced. |
| 61 | 17 | ‘larmoyant’ | Untraced. |
| 67 | 13 up | ‘Who are these gargoyles?’ | Untraced. |
| 76 | 9 | ‘by the go of her’ | Untraced. |
| 16 | ‘violent Jew’ | See ch. 1, note 4. | |
| 95 | 16–15 up | vaporous clouds of nonsense | Untraced. |
| 103 | 4 | ‘caricaturally English’ | Untraced. |
| 104 | 4 | ‘The war is off!’ | Untraced. |
| 118 | 15 | ‘You have beautiful black eyes.’ | Quoted by Avishai Margalit, BI 18. |
| 15–14 up | ‘Young man, I can’t understand a word you say, but if you write anything, I’ll print it.’ | Untraced. | |
| 139 | 11–10 up | the ‘overwhelming tragedy’ and the ‘horror’ | Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A, vol. 21, January 1943–May 1945, ed. Michael J. Cohen (1979), 24, 26. |
| 140 | 8–9 | 28 April 1945. | WD 551–2. |
| 146 | 16–17 | ‘I reject the indignity without the emolument.’ | PI 220; Tape 24-2: 17. |
| 147 | 10–13, 16–18 [see corrections above] |
read The Times.’ | Tape 24-1: 8–9. |
| 222 | 2 | ‘with no natural bristles’ | Untraced. |
| 228 | 7 | ‘the first totally free Jew of the modern world’ | PI 96. |