Spirit of the Age

Who are the key people whose lives are helping to define the age that we are now living through? How do their stories resonate our own? What are the forces that drive and confine their impacts on the directions laid down in the first decades of the twenty-first century? These are similar questions to those posed two hundred years ago by the English essayist William Hazlitt. I follow his lead, borrowing his title. The present volume comprises thirty-one essays grouped into seven thematic areas that I suggest will help us navigate through the uncertain landscape of the future. There are two additional essays that top and tail the collection in which I seek to summarise Hazlitt's concerns in his age and focus my concerns in our age.