Alan Montefiore in conversation with Nick Rankin

Rankin How did you meet Isaiah Berlin?

Montefiore The answer comes in two stages. As a student I hardly ever went to lectures, because I used to fall asleep, however good the lecturer was; but I went to Isaiah’s lectures, without falling asleep, not so much to hear what he was saying, but just to listen to him talking. It was a pure joy for an hour just to listen to this overflowing, continuous cascade of beautifully formed language, with Isaiah always staring at the upper corner of the room, because, as he explained to me later in life, he didn’t like looking at his audience – he was always intimidated. So I knew him before I met him, if I can put it that way.

Then the man I was sharing rooms with at Balliol turned out to know him personally, and said to me, ‘You must meet Isaiah.’ So I met him through this friend, Robin Jessell, and at some point after that Isaiah and I somehow connived in persuading John Sparrow, then Warden of All Souls, that he must get his College to invite Leszek Kołakowski, who was then somewhat stranded in the United States, to become a Fellow of All Souls.

Later we formed a lunch club, of which there were at most only ever three members – Arnold Goodman being the third, which didn’t really work very well because Arnold was too large to sit easily at the tables in the lunchtime dining room at All Souls – but most of the time it was just Isaiah and myself; typically we met once a month, alternately at his invitation and at mine, for over a quarter of a century.

Rankin What did you talk about at these lunches?

Montefiore It was mostly Isaiah talking, because (as anyone who knew Isaiah would know) you had really to interrupt to get a word in. I think he talked mostly about people that he knew or had known, or the affairs either of the intellectual community or of the Jewish community – of which, of course, we were both members.

Rankin How would you place Berlin? I’ve heard him described as very important in the tradition of radical, liberal humanism.