The way we were

Berlin was one of the 20th century's greatest liberal thinkers—and one of its frankest, most eloquent and prolific letter-writers. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth on 6th June, Prospect will be featuring a special online review of his letters by David Herman. The extracts below are taken from the second volume of Berlin's correspondence, Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960, edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes (Chatto & Windus, £35), published on 4th June.


18th July 1949

To Arthur Schlesinger, written while crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth. Peace, tranquillity, & on board, apart from the usual clever but not tremendously nice Hungarian economists who have met one in someone's rooms in Oxford in 1937, Miss Greta Garbo & Mr Jacob Mallik of the USSR. To tantalize you, we take the second first; very blond, huge, coarse, post-Litvinov [a former Soviet Ambassador in the US]. Sat at my table & not too pleased when, in an insidious voice I turned from the Cleveland couple on the other side & informed him that I understood all he was saying [in Russian] to his wife & he had better realize it… At the next meal [the] Malliks disappeared. Obviously they decided the ship was really too unsafe; spies everywhere; crude British Intelligence tactics… As for Miss Garbo, goodness she is dumb. By a series of accidents I found myself at a party next to her; she is beautiful beyond belief & and no less stupid: she painfully, slowly, terribly, tells stale anecdotes of 1925. Stories about Irishmen, Scotsmen etc, something a little like Zuleika Dobson without any oomph at all… I now know why (1) Miss Garbo uses lipstick (someone thought she should) (2) Miss Garbo prefers Chesterfields to Camels (or the other way)—she can't tell the difference but may be there is one—then a tinkling laugh—the words Oo la la—it is a nightmare. Mr J Ringling North of the [Ringling Brothers] Circus in my presence invites her to go to Paris in the special coach, otherwise reserved for elephants etc. Very suitable too. Yet she is an object of religious veneration to my generation, I see that.

1st November 1956



To Clarissa Eden, the wife of the Prime Minister, Anthony, written in Oxford. The Suez Crisis had begun a few days earlier. The previous day Britain and France had bombed Egyptian airfields and sunk an Egyptian ship. This is only to say that at this moment when undergraduates are demonstrating in the High Street against the government, and dons are going about speechless with indignation, and the Manchester Guardian has declared that our moral credit has gone virtually forever, and the Observer is surely going to preach with the peculiar mixture of sanctimoniousness & hysteria which is more nauseating than even the New Statesman—I should like to offer the Prime Minister all my admiration and sympathy. His action seems to me very brave, very patriotic and—I should have thought—absolutely just… it seems to me that Anthony (if I may call him that) has behaved with great moral splendour: whatever the outcome he has risked his own reputation for what he thinks to be a vital national interest. I think his policy is in essentials absolutely right. But whatever view may be taken of his judgment, his courage, honesty, and strength of will, in circumstances which put these qualities to a most appalling test, have been such that he will, I believe, turn out to have saved England. You must forgive me for all this outpouring: I have never in my life written in such terms before to you or to anybody: but I feel passionately—& a pretty lonely figure I am in this wishy washy town—dear good people but with enormous reluctance to look at facts rather than rules of conduct—& I really could not refrain from writing to you to say that I send you all my affection & Devotion and good will and everything else that you may feel in need of.