Introduction

Upon being awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1979, Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote a short article, ‘The Three Strands of My Life’ , in which he gave a considered response to a question asked at the time by an interviewer, about whether it was true to say that Berlin had been formed by three traditions: Russian, British and Jewish. To his Russian origins Berlin ascribed his lifelong interest in ideas, leading to the development of his work on liberalism and pluralism. The British tradition he described as a sense of civilised human reality and ‘a quality of life founded on compromise and toleration as these have been developed in the British world’ , with which he identified strongly, having lived in Britain for sixty years. His Jewish identity he felt to be so deeply rooted that it was impossible for him to analyse it, though he described his sharing of a common past, feelings and language with the Jewish community, and related this to a wider sense of fraternity in other cultures as well as his own.

Evidence of these three strands is to be found, in different guises, intertwined throughout the extensive body of personal papers left behind by Berlin after his death. Wherever one looks, it is possible to detect one or more of them acting on his thought or deeds and in his relations with others, whether in correspondence about his views on Zionism, in papers relating to his academic activities in Oxford and elsewhere, or in notes made in researching his works on the history of ideas. It is impossible to separate from each other these deeprooted and personal themes in describing such an archive, but it is hoped that this report will indicate and illustrate the full breadth and interest of Berlin's papers, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for researchers in several fields.

Berlin and his archive

Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, in what is now Latvia, of Russian Jewish parents. After spending his early years mainly in Riga and in Petrograd, Russia, he moved with his parents to London in 1921. Thereafter he was educated at St Paul's School and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the beginning of a lifelong association with the University.

Between 1932 and 1938 Berlin was a Fellow of All Souls College, where he studied and taught philosophy, and wrote a biography of Karl Marx.