Intellectual in politics and other essays

Any decision to publish a volume of lectures and essays, most of which have already been in print, demands some explanation. One part of the defence is easy enough; a number of the pieces here, including some of the most important ones, have appeared abroad or if in this country in pamphlet series not likely to reach more than a small number of the readers who might be interested in them; the other part, that directed to the question of their intrinsic value and inter-connection, is more difficult.
A glance at the table of contents will show that the essays cover what appear to be rather diverse topics treated in very different ways; some historical set-pieces alongside rather immediate reactions to particular events or publications. It is indeed a much more heterogeneous collection than my earlier one which was almost exclusively concerned with problems of international relations." But although there are one or two cases where the decisive reason for inclusion was a wish to make a particular piece of historical research available, the guiding principle has been to bring together out of a much larger number of occasional writings those which illustrate my own intellectual interests over the last few years.