I. Berlin

Isaiah Berlin once opined that Washington is not a city: "It's more like a vast, temporary headquarters during a campaign. . . . Washington is a bivouac."

After three years in the Washington bivouac, rumpled, tubby, articulate Isaiah Berlin had left the British Embassy staff last week and gone home to London. As one of the Embassy's First Secretaries, he had for a time contributed more than any other one person to official British knowledge of the current U.S.

Dark-skinned, raven-haired Berlin's main job was to compile weekly reports on the U.S. scene, which he accumulated in part in an interminable round of dinners and cocktail parties. Hostesses and guests were charmed by his Oxford-accented observations on the world and its great; Reporter Berlin was charmed with what he learned. His sparkling accounts became "must" reading for policy-making Britons. Winston Churchill once entertained Composer Irving Berlin at lunch without learning that he was not the "I. Berlin" who signed those fascinating reports from Washington.

Son of a Riga timber merchant, Berlin emigrated to Britain as a young man and spent most of his adult life in or near Oxford. He speaks English, German, Russian, French, is an authority on Karl Marx, Greek philosophy, Russian literature and music, the U.S. Congress and politics. He was one of few men at the Embassy who foresaw Britain's Labor victory.

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