This is a wonderful film of Bertrand Russell, interviewed aged around 87.

Russell lived so passionately, and was active in so many areas of intellectual and political life, that it is difficult to achieve a true picture of all he was and did. One can study his mathematical logic at university (his History and the essays are read less frequently) and never discover that he was also the moral and intellectual conscience of post-War Britain.

Today’s anti-war and anti-nuclear movements are cursed with a lack of institutional memory and venerate him less than they should. With the decline of unions, political parties and communism, each new generation of activists thinks it is inventing activism afresh (which means that the step each individual takes into activism is relatively braver, but relatively less effective, than those for whom it is a part of normal social life). It can come as a great surprise to for them to learn how important Russell was. I speak, at least, for myself.

It is common today to lament the loss of figures like Russell. Frank Furedi, for example, does this in his (2005) Where Have all the Intellectuals Gone? Arguably, though, there are no fewer intellectuals active today in the spheres of politics and the mind than ever before; Chomsky, for example, is surely in Russell’s mould. What these intellectuals lack is ready access to a comprehending media.

In response to this objection, lamenters such as Furedi tend to blame the intellectuals themselves for not making better use of the media to ‘get their message across’. The lamenters should read Chomsky on the function of the mass media in industrialized countries; they are unable to do this, however, since, as they rely on the media for their knowledge of the world, they don’t know who Chomsky is.