Stefan Collini is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Clare Hall. A frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, and other periodicals both in Britain and the USA, his previous books include Public Moralists (1991), Matthew Arnold: a Critical Portrait (1994), and English Pasts (1999). He is a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society.

• Introduction: The Question of Intellectuals ; PART ONE: THE TERMS OF THE QUESTION ; 1. The History of a Word ; 2. A Matter of Definition ; PART TWO: FONDER HEARTS ; 3. Anglo-Saxon Attitudes ; 4. Of Light and Leading ; 5. Highbrows and Other Aliens ; 6. The Long 1950s I: Happy Families ; 7. The Long 1950s II: Brave Causes ; 8. From New Left to Old Chestnut ; PART THREE: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ; 9. In their Natonal Habitat ; 10. Greener Grass: Letters from America ; 11. The Peculiarities of the French ; 12. The Translation of the Clerks ; PART FOUR: SOME VERSIONS OF DENIAL ; 13. Clerisy or Undesirables: T. S. Eliot ; 14. Professional Cackling: R. G. Collingwood ; 15. Other People: George Orwell ; 16. Nothing to Say: A. J. P. Taylor ; 17. No True Answers: A. J. Ayer ; PART FIVE: REPEAT PERFORMANCES ; 18. Outsider Studies: The Glamour of Dissent ; 19. Media Studies: A Discourse of General Ideas ; 20. Long Views I: Specialization and its Discontents ; 21. Long Views II: From Authority to Celebrity? ; Epilogue: No Elsewhere

Stefan Collini's Absent Minds provided an intriguing analysis of the question of intellectuals in Britian during the twentieth century...a superb, well-writtian book with few discernible flaws...Collini has tackled a complex subject in an imaginative and compelling fashion, and Absent Minds will only enhance his reputation as the leading scholar of British intellectual history.