Defending Politics

A collection of Bernard Crick's writings comprising everything he ever wrote for The Political Quarterly from the late 1950s to 2008 - newly re-edited and with an Introduction, the collection reveals the intellectual and political development, as well as the wit and style, of one of the most intriguing public intellectuals of the postwar period.

• Includes articles, reviews, all assignable commentaries, and the first chapter of his abandoned history of the Political Quarterly journal, from the late 1950s to 2008
• The earliest pieces coincide with his beginnings as a new lecturer at the LSE, follows his ideas, insights and preoccupations through his years as author of the classic In Defence of Politics and his biography of Orwell, to his later work with the Home Office on citizenship and articles written in the last year of his life.
• Explores how a person universally described in his 2008 obituaries as ambitious, self-centred and personally difficult could assume such an important role in the collective enterprise of The Political Quarterly.
• A definitive collection, unrivalled in its depth and span of years, covering such perennial (and PQ) issues as public policy, governance, parliamentary reform, education, citizenship, the fortunes of the Labour party, and the evolution of leftward politics in the UK.

Stephen Ball is Senior Lecturer at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, Oxford Brookes University and is Assistant Editor of The Political Quarterly.