SOURCE: “Dogs in Sheep's Clothing,” in New Statesman & Society, October 7, 1988, pp. 32–33.

In the following review, Wood gives an unfavorable assessment of Intellectuals, which he judges to be “a naive book trying to look sensible and grown-up.”

Intellectual is one of those words which lead relatively quiet lives as adjectives, but get shrill and nasty when they turn into nouns, especially in the plural. You can hear the indignation in them. This word crawls in red script up the cover of Paul Johnson's book [Intellectuals] like an accusation, like a sneer, saying, “Who do they think they are?” In the past the complainers were in the habit of using the prefix pseudo, thereby suggesting a respect for real intellectuals, if there happened to be any around. But this was wasteful, because there never were any around, and the distinction, it now seems, was just too generous. Real intellectuals are...