“The claim that Britain lacks ‘real’ intellectuals is usually based on a normative model derived primarily from France, where the term ‘intellectuels’ was applied to the members of a group of writers who supported Alfred Dreyfus in 1898. Since at least the eighteenth century, the British have constructed their national identity by contrasting themselves with the French. When the image of intellectuals as a dissident and cohesive group intimately involved in politics began to emerge in France, in the early twentieth century, it was only natural that the British should define themselves in opposing terms…”