Photo by Clive Barda

‘Life can be seen through many windows, none of them necessarily clear or opaque, less or more distorting than any of the others.’ *

Isaiah Berlin, 1909–1997

A tribute from Wolfson College, Oxford

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM died in Oxford on 5 November 1997. He was Wolfson College’s First President. These pages are part of a modest tribute to Sir Isaiah, which it is hoped will be improved and added to as opportunities present themselves.

Contents

Obituary in the London Independent

Bibliography of works

Books currently in print in English

A Guest from the Future – Jon Stallworthy

Wolfson and Portofino – Jeremy Black

Photographic portraits – Clive Barda † / Steve Pyke / Lucinda Douglas-Menzies

Call for Letters

Editing Berlin – Henry Hardy

Two Berlins – Desert Island Discs anecdote

The Isaiah Berlin Lectures

Sheldonian tributes

American tributes

This is the Tribute gateway

‘Isaiah Berlin was one of the most remarkable men of his time, and one of the leading liberal thinkers of the century. Philosopher, political theorist, historian of ideas; Russian, Englishman, Jew; essayist, critic, teacher; he was a man of formidable intellectual power with a rare gift for understanding a wide range of human motives, hopes and fears, and a prodigiously energetic capacity for enjoyment of life, of people in all their variety, of their ideas and idiosyncrasies, of literature, of music, of art.’

From the obituary of Berlin in the London Independent