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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.

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