The Intellectuals

Are intellectuals morally fit to give advice to humanity? How great is their respect for truth? How do they apply their public principles to their private lives? How do they treat their spouses and children - legitimate and illegitimate? What is their attitude to money? How loyal are they to their friends?

These questions are asked in a series of case studies. Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Norman Mailer and others are put under the spotlight, revealed in incisive portraits, as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory.