ention ‘culture wars’ today and people assume you're talking about ‘woke’ issues like race or sexuality. This was not the case 60 years ago when the messianic Cambridge don, FR Leavis, denounced the novelist and former physicist CP Snow, who in 1959 gave a lecture called ‘The Two Cultures’ in which he deplored the ignorance and suspicion towards science shown by leading men of letters, whom he called ‘Luddites’. Scientists, said Snow, had ‘the future in their bones’. Rubbish, said Dr Leavis. An abrasive figure who lectured
