The title of this large, attractive book needs explanation. It isn't to be understood as a claim to deal with the times of all of us who are now alive. First, there is a chronological limitation. 'Our Age' is used in a sense defined thus by Maurice Bowra: 'anyone who came of age and went to the university in the thirty years between 1919, the end of the Great War, and 1949 - or, say, 1951', by which date all who had served in the war had returned to the university. So constituent members of Our Age need to be over sixty and could be over ninety. Secondly, there is an obvious social or educational restriction, since a very large number of people who would qualify by reason of age fail to get in because they never went to a university. Moreover it is distinctly preferable to have been at Oxbridge, and to have made a mark there, so the number of the eligible is really quite small.

LRB 11 October 1990 | PDF Download