Shifting horizons

pp. 185-200

in: Arie M. Dubnov, Isaiah Berlin, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

During the seventies, Berlin confessed that something peculiar had happened to him in late March 1944, on a transatlantic flight to London on board a bomber. He offered several versions of the story: in an interview with the Belgian Radio, he claimed that during this flight he was suddenly troubled by thoughts that eventually changed the course of his future career. "In those days bombers were not pressurized, and so we were told to take oxygen," he remembered. There was no light, and therefore he couldn't read, and he didn't sleep either, fearing that he would fall on the oxygen pipe.