Skip to main content
The Morning Star Shop
French intellectuals obscured in a moral twilight zone

The End of the French Intellectual
by Shlomo Sand
(Verso, £16)

PHILOSOPHER Bertrand Russell once claimed that Britain was the only country where he could not identify himself as an intellectual.

While this country might not “do” intellectuals, the French embrace them with a vengeance. Or, according to Israeli author Shlomo Sand, they did up until the present.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
4.48
Theatre review / 18 July 2025
18 July 2025

GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today

constant
Theatre review / 4 July 2025
4 July 2025

GORDON PARSONS is disappointed by an unsubtle production of this comedy of upper middle class infidelity

HAMLET
Theatre review / 16 June 2025
16 June 2025

GORDON PARSONS joins a standing ovation for a brilliant production that fuses Shakespeare’s tragedy with Radiohead's music

londres
Books / 12 June 2025
12 June 2025

GORDON PARSONS recommends a gripping account of flawed justice in the case of Pinochet and the Nazi fugitive Walther Rauff

Similar stories
Pier Paolo Pasolini as Chaucer in his film of The Canterbury
Books / 16 October 2024
16 October 2024
GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
PRIMAL SITE OF VIOLENCE: The Chicago meatpacking yards, 1909
Books / 12 September 2024
12 September 2024
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends the application of ‘Gothic Marxism’ for its memorable portrayal of the physical violence done to working people
Statue of Spinoza by Nicolas Dings in Zwanenburgwal, Amsterd
Books / 5 September 2024
5 September 2024
GORDON PARSONS recommends a fine introduction to a philosopher who, like Marx, worked to help society to reject illusion and understand the realities of the human condition
Books / 6 August 2024
6 August 2024
GORDON PARSONS welcomes a graphic biography of George Sand, the most popular French novelist in 19th-century Britain