The author suggests that Bertrand Russell was "perhaps our last public sage", a man of extraordinary passion and strength, but full of contradictions. He preached reason and selflessness and believed in free love, yet those closest to him often felt hurt and disillusioned. Far earlier than most, he realized that Bolshevism would lead to dictatorship, but it was America rather than Russia that he saw as a threat to world peace. Possibly the most brilliant undergraduate of his generation, Russell was always logical, but oddly inconsistent, never quite at one with the world around him. Caroline Moorehead's books include biographies of Freya Stark and Sidney Bernstein.