Items related to The Dons – Mentors, Eccentrics & Geniuses:...

The Dons – Mentors, Eccentrics & Geniuses: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses - Hardcover

 
9780226021072: The Dons – Mentors, Eccentrics & Geniuses: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
For two hundred years Oxford and Cambridge universities were home to some of Britain's greatest teachers and intellects, each forming the minds of the passing generations of students and influencing the thinking and practice of university learning throughout the country and the world. In this entertaining, informative book, Noel Annan is at his incisive best. Displaying his customary mastery of his subject, he describes the great dons in all their glory and eccentricities: who they were, what they were like, why they mattered, and what their legacy is. Written with love and wisdom, the great minds of the past - figures such as John Henry Newman, John Sparrow, and Isaiah Berlin - are brought alive. In addition, Annan's often quoted article "The Intellectual Aristocracy" is included in this book. No other work has ever explained so precisely and so intimately the significance of the dons and their important role in shaping higher education - at a time when the nature of learning is ever more the subject of dissension and uncertainty.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
Like a communication from a bygone age, The Dons records the eccentricities and enthusiasms the brain-workers at what Annan unashamedly calls "the elite institutions of higher education in this country"--by which he means Oxford, Cambridge and some of the London colleges. It is written with love and a kind of dry passion, and many of its anecdotes are indeed funny, although the funniest tend to be the ones in which the dignity of the dons themselves is undercut. William Buckland, for instance, was prepared to eat anything, and boasted that he had devoured his way through the animal kingdom and that the worst thing was a mole ("perfectly horrible"). Confronted with a dark stain on the floor of an Italian cathedral reputed to be the blood of a martyr he "dropped to his knees and licked it" declaring "I can tell you what that is: it is bat's urine". Elegant, amusing and in a way charming, this book is nonetheless more than a little difficult to like. Partly this is Annan's style, which is quaint and sometimes crabbed. For example he says that Oxbridge colleges "differed just as families do. One college might be rent with quarrels, another might be a cosy womb, a third an amorphous society devoid of any particular character. There were dim colleges, fusby places." More central is just how old-fashioned Annan's perspective is. Almost none of these dons are women, none at all are black or working class. There are times when Annan's own Senior Common Room narrowness of perspective becomes simply infuriating. Universities, he says, ought to exist for one reason only: "They exist to cultivate the intellect. Everything else is secondary. Equality of opportunity to come to the university is secondary ... the need to mix classes, nationalities and races together is secondary. Universities should hold up for admiration the intellectual life." Annan's idea seems to be that we should all sit in hushed awe, contemplating the enlarged intellects of his dons: that that is enough in itself to justify the university system. Without these apparently "secondary" considerations, the "elite" of which Annan is so proud, and to which he belongs, would continue to consist of a small group of white, upper-class men; and would become even less relevant to multicultural gender-equal Britain than they were in the past. --Adam Roberts
Review:

A series of sparkling biographical essays on some of the most richly anecdotal figures of the past 150 years, which also, once the entertainment has subsided, leaves a solid deposit of information on the evolution of the ancient universities over the period.
Roy Jenkins, Sunday Telepgraph - Books of the Year

The Dons is a stylish dissection of that peculiar mixture of pedantry and frivolity which is traditional Oxbridge.
Terry Eagleton, Independent on Sunday

Annan is a man of his generation, for whose mannerisms his ear has prefect pitch.
Daniel Johnson, Daily Telegraph

This book is rich in anecdocte, elegantly crammed in by Annan’s lapidary wit... if, as Annan half-suggests, the conversation between the past and present is now dying out, one is doubly grateful for this array of vividly resurrected voices.
Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Shipping: £ 11.49
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom

Destination, rates & speeds

Add to Basket

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Books From California
(Simi Valley, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Sealed in original plastic. Seller Inventory # mon0003344511

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 8.34
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 11.49
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenDragon
(Houston, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Buy for Great customer experience. Seller Inventory # GoldenDragon0226021076

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 15.99
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 23.78
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0226021076

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 18.09
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 22.19
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Wizard Books
(Long Beach, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0226021076

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 20.93
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 24.17
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldBooks
(Austin, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0226021076

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 22.11
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 24.57
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Front Cover Books
(Denver, CO, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0226021076

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 23.52
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 24.17
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Books Unplugged
(Amherst, NY, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Buy with confidence! Book is in new, never-used condition. Seller Inventory # bk0226021076xvz189zvxnew

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 37.55
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 12.68
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Book Deals
(Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published. Seller Inventory # 353-0226021076-new

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 52.66
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 11.89
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Annan, Noel
Published by University of Chicago Press (2000)
ISBN 10: 0226021076 ISBN 13: 9780226021072
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
BennettBooksLtd
(LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.45. Seller Inventory # Q-0226021076

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 48.43
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 34.87
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds