Paul Johnson puts the private morality of some of our greatest thinkers under the spotlight. In this provocative book,Paul Johnson examines whether intellectuals are morally fit to give advice to humanity.How great is their respect for truth? How do they apply their public principles to their private lives? How loyal are they to their friends? These questions are asked in a series of case studies.Rousseau,Shelley,Marx,Ibsen,Tolstoy,Hemingway,Bertrand Russell,Brecht,Sartre,Edmund Wilson,Victor Gollancz,Lillian Hellman,Norman Mailer and others are revealed in incisive portraits,as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory.