Politics and Letters

Raymond Williams has made a central contribution to the culture of the Left in the English-speaking world. Politics and Letters is a volume of interviews with Williams, conducted by members of the New Left Review editorial committee, that is designed to bring into clear focus the major theoretical and political issues posed by his work. Ranging across his biographical development, the evolution of his cultural theory and literary criticism, his work on dramatic forms and his fiction, the volume concludes with an exploration of Williams's positions on British and international politics.

Effectively a new kind of book ... an outstanding feat of composition ... a remarkable human achievement., An absolutely riveting piece of work., For anybody interested in the relationship between literature and society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this book is essential reading., This is, quite simply, one of the most magnificent books I have read.

Raymond Williams was born in 1921 in the Welsh border village of Pandy, and was educated at the village school, at Abergavenny Grammar School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was elected Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1961 and was later appointed University Professor of Drama.His books include Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961) and its sequel Towards 2000 (1983); Communications (1962) and Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974); Drama in Performance (1954), Modern Tragedy (1966) and Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (1968); The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence (1970), Orwell (1971) and The Country and the City (1973); Politics and Letters (interviews) (1979) and Problems in Materialism and Culture (selected essays) (1980); and four novels - the Welsh trilogy of Border Country (1960), Second Generation (1964) and The Fight for Manod (1979), and The Volunteers (1978).