Underrated
Leszek Kolakowski
It may seem odd to describe the Polish-born philosopher Leszek Kołakowski as "underrated." After all, he has been the beneficiary of several plum academic appointments, including posts at Yale, the University of Chicago and All Souls, Oxford. Kołakowski (who is now in his early eighties and lives in Oxford) has also been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and high-profile prizes, including a MacArthur "genius" award (for once the MacArthur Foundation got it right) and, just a few years back, the Kluge Prize for "lifetime achievement in the humanities," which carries a purse of $1 million (about £590,000).
Previous columns
Sarah Palin
GERARD BAKEROctober 2008
Governor Palin may be inexperienced but she owes her huge popularity in Alaska to getting things done
Roger Bacon
NICHOLAS FEARNSeptember 2008
Surely the man who can claim to be the world's first experimental scientist and to have advised the Pope deserves a better reputation
Elie Kedourie
KENNETH MINOGUEAugust 2008
Kenneth Minogue recalls the great Anglo-Iraqi scholar who was both amused and outraged by the folly of intellectuals
Quinlan Terry
DAVID WATKINJuly 2008
As a student Terry was told he would fail if he continued to submit any more classical designs
Ian Fleming
ANONYMOUSJune 2008
No novelist since Stevenson imparts so much energy into simple-seeming sentences through inch-perfect phrasing and punctuation
Most forwarded
Most commented
