Common Writing

Collini provides intelligent discussions of the lives and works of a range of individuals - writers, literary critics, historians, and other intellectuals - whose work has appealed to an audience beyond the strictly scholarly or academically inclined ... The range of the book is welcome, in particular because it offers thoughtful commentary on figures who may be less familiar, such as R. M. Titmuss, Herbert Butterfield, Timothy Garton Ash, and specialists in other fields ... Recommended. * CHOICE * at his best he [Collini] transforms our understanding of an author and the world in which he - and it is almost always he - works ... it would be worth handing these volumes on to students to give them a keener sense of how to write, for both these authors are brilliant stylists as well as important thinkers; indeed, they make the point ... that to write well is to think well. If they convey nothing more than that - and, read attentively, they will convey far more - these books will have served a most useful purpose. * William Whyte, Twentieth Century British History * elegant and arch series of essays on modern English intellectual life * Oxford Today * Collini offers a series of companionable, entertaining and often insightful considerations of his subjects. He has a gift for evoking a powerful sense of a particular writer's work and personality; his attention to their use of language is usually careful, sensitive and revealing; and he shows a willingness to argue against himself that lends his judgements extra subtlety, interest and weight. * Prospect * One of the strengths of Common Writing is the success with which Collini is able to show why his discipline matters. * Rafe McGregor, Review 31 * His [Collini's] task here, which he performs with admirable aplomb, is to eulogize the passing order ... [an] absorbing book * David Hawkes, Times Literary Supplement * eloquently acerbic prose * Robert Irwin, Books of the Year 2016, Times Literary Supplement *