Maurice Bowra: A Life - Hardcover

Mitchell, Leslie

4.06

16 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199295840 ISBN 13: 9780199295845

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009

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Maurice Bowra was, according to one's point of view, either the most distinguished or the most notorious Oxford don of the early twentieth century. Classicist, poet, wit, raconteur extraordinary, and Warden of Wadham College for over thirty years, he met nearly everyone of consequence in the worlds of literature and politics and had stories to tell about them all, from Jean Cocteau to Virginia Woolf, from Adolf Hitler to the Kennedys, from Isaiah Berlin to Charlie Chaplin. By force of personality and intellectual range, he influenced the thinking of almost everyone with whom he came into contact.

Above all, brought up in Edwardian England, he was able to chart the ways in which the values of his youth were tested by new democratic ideas. His experiences allowed him to develop and employ theories of education that were startling, and which would mould the thinking of a generation of English intellectuals.

Based upon a wide range of interviews and previously unpublished manuscript material, this is the first ever biography of Bowra, and covers every aspect of his life, from soldier on the Western Front to Oxford classicist, from celebrated wit to frustrated poet manqu��.

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About the Author:

Leslie Mitchell was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and was for many years a fellow of University College. He is a specialist on the history of England and France in the eighteenth century and has written a number of acclaimed biographies, including lives of Charles James Fox, Lord Melbourne, and Bulwer Lytton.

Review:

...absorbing book... Hugh Cecil, The Spectator Leslie Mitchell's book is richly embroidered and captures, warts and all, the man who impressed so many of his peers. Melvyn Bragg, Daily Telegraph We are in Leslie Mitchell's debt for bringing Bowra so convincingly to life, recapturing so vividly both the attractive and the repellent features of an extraordinary academic icon Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement ...stylish biography... Mitchell makes a spirited effort to bring Bowra back to life: he draws a perceptive and sympathetic portrait, one which allows us to hear distant echoes of the voice and to persuade ourselves that we have some inkling of his power and charm. Stefan Collini, London Review of Books ...richly detailed biography. Noel Malcom, Standpoint Magazine ...meticulous and elegant... Peter Wilby, New Statesman Leslie Mitchell is a sure guide to the world Bowra inhabited. If anyone can resurrect Bowra for the twenty-first century, it is he. Adam Sisman, Literary Review ...deeply illuminating and carefully researched... Leslie Mitchell's vivid and accomplished study reminds us above all of an old-fashioned faith in the value of a university education as an end in itself Mark Bostridge, The Independent

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