Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) and Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) were among the leading figures of 20th-century transatlantic intellectual life, Wilson the American critic and man of letters, and Berlin the British intellectual historian and political philosopher. The two met in 1946, when Wilson, the older by 14 years, was just over 50. "He spoke in a moving and imaginative fashion about the American writers of his generation, about Dante," Berlin writes in a short memoir focused on Oxford and on London literary life in the fifties. "He then talked about Russian literature in general, and particularly about Chekhov and Gogol, as well as I have ever heard anyone talk on any literary topic. I was completely fascinated; I felt honored to have met this greatly gifted and morally impressive man." They would become fast friends, seeing each other throughout the 1950s and '60s in London and Oxford as well as in Manhattan, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at Wilson's old stone house in upstate New York. The following conversation took place in London on the afternoon of March 27, 1991. I had written to Berlin, telling him that I was editing Wilson's last journal, The Sixties, and beginning a biography of the critic.  I began by asking whether Wilson had changed over the many years the two knew each other.

Berlin: No, I think he was exactly the same. Intent, intense, passionate, serious, had no small talk, and everything he said meant something. How wonderful to be a man, every one of whose sentences conveyed something! With no chatter.

D: His conversational self matched his literary persona?

Berlin: Yes, he spoke as he wrote.

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