What Desires Are Politically Important? [1950]

On 10 November 1950 Russell was lunching at Princeton with the physicist Robert Oppenheimer when he received confirmation from Stockholm that he had won that year’s Nobel Prize for literature. The public announcement of Russell’s award generated a tidal wave of publicity for the remainder of his American lecture tour. The award was not without precedent, for the same accolade had been conferred on French philosopher Henri Bergson in 1927. One of the most generous tributes to Russell’s literary merit came from Kingsley Martin, who was “delighted at the recognition of the wittiest and most pure of English stylists”. The desires that are politically important may be divided into a primary and a secondary group. In the primary group come the necessities of life: food and shelter and clothing.