Synopsis
Restless Ringmasters is a study of major British intellectual periodicals and those who conducted them, high-minded editors whose mission was to make the world a more civilised place. Focusing on such influential figures as Francis Jeffrey (editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1802 till 1829), James Knowles (editor of the Nineteenth Century from 1877 till 1907) and Kingsley Martin (editor of the New Statesman from 1931 till 1960), Neil Berry depicts the great exponents of the "higher journalism" as opinionated creatures of the British empire. But he argues that, for all their professional superciliousness, they were in many ways admirable public servants who did much to prepare the way for the civic-minded Britain that emerged after the Second World War. Restless Ringmasters closes with an anatomy of the career of Karl Miller, successively literary editor of the Spectator and the New Statesman, editor of the Listener and founding editor of the London Review of Books.
Berry portrays this Scottish literary impresario as the zealous heir of the Edinburgh reviewers of the nineteenth century, an upholder of old-style high-mindedness in an age when that quality has ceased to be a conspicuous feature of British public life. In an afterword, the author ponders the fate of residual "higher journalism" in the face of a commercialised media culture fixated on soundbites and celebrities.
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