Terry Eagleton: Culture conundrum

The age-old conflict between civilisation and barbarism has lately taken an ominous turn

This year sees the 20th anniversary of the death of Raymond Williams, one of the towering socialist thinkers of the past century. A superb biography - Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale - has just been published by Dai Smith. He charts Williams's passage from the Welsh border country, where his father was a railway signalman, to Cambridge and then adult education, a vocation he chose, along with New Left c...