In some respects, Paul Johnson's cast of characters seem more a collection of eccentrics than a representative group of genuine intellectuals. Rousseau, whom he (perhaps rightly) describes as an interesting madman, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Edmund Wilson - they have very little in common except that they all make good copy, as the more predatory type of biographer has found to his profit. By comparison, Victor Gollancz and Lillian Hellman seem lightweight and also hopelessly dated. The book is, needless to say, largely a debunking exercise, but not in any snide sense, and it is good, readable literary journalism throughout. The expose of Sartre, shown up as a relentless careerist and political humbug, is long overdue.