"People are my landscape," Isaiah Berlin liked to say, and nowhere is the truth of this observation more evident than in his letters. This second volume of Berlin’s letters takes up the story when, after war service in the U.S., he returns to life as an Oxford don. Against the background of post-war austerity, the letters chart years of academic frustration and self-doubt, the intellectual explosion when he moves from philosophy to the history of ideas, his growing national fame as broadcaster and lecturer, the publication of some of his best-known works, his election to a professorship, and his reaction to knighthood. Berlin’s visits to American universities, where he sees McCarthyism at work, and his journeys eastward—to Europe, Palestine (and later Israel), and the Soviet Union—inspire acute and often very funny portraits. These are the years, too, of momentous developments in his private life: the bachelor don’s loss of sexual innocence, the emotional turmoil of his father’s death, his courtship of a married woman, and his transformation into husband and stepfather.

以赛亚•伯林爵士（Sir Isaiah Berlin，1909—1997），英国哲学家、观念史学家、20世纪著名自由主义知识分子。生于俄国犹太家庭，童年目睹俄国革命，1921年随父母前往英国。1928年进入牛津大学攻读哲学，1939年借撰写《卡尔•马克思》的契机转向观念史研究。1957年就职牛津大学社会与政治理论教授，发表具有开创性的“两种自由概念”演说，同年获封爵士。参与创办牛津大学沃尔夫森学院并出任首任院长。作为杰出的观念史学家和学科主要奠基人，先后被授予耶路撒冷文学奖和伊拉斯谟奖。