This is the second article in a six-piece symposium on Gordon Brown as intellectual. Other articles include:
John Lloyd on an intellectual in power
Daniel Johnson on Brown the unsophisticated bookworm
Geoff Mulgan on the American inspiration behind Brown’s thinking
Richard Cockett on the question of Brown’s religious faith
Kamran Nazeer on Brown’s book Courage
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s new blog
If we define an intellectual as “author of at least one scholarly book,” the last intellectual to be prime minister was AJ Balfour (1902-05; author of A Defence of Philosophic Doubt). The one before was Lord Rosebery (1894-95; author of Napoleon: the Last Phase), and before him WE Gladstone (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94; author of Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age).
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