In 1978 Terry Eagleton wrote an essay on John Bayley in the New Left Review. It is a ritual excoriation of that most tactful of 'liberal humanist' critics, punctuated with predictable sneers about 'a view of life from the Oxford senior common room window' and how Bayley's criticism prizes a liberal disorder that depends on a conservative order 'within which the gentleman may wear his art and opinions lightly'. But it opens with great generosity, even warmth. I begin with its opening passage, having changed a word here and there, in order to suggest that Oxford has its continuities:

LRB 23 May 1991 | PDF Download