George Steiner

Francis George Steiner, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, as well as the impact of the Holocaust. A 2001 article in The Guardian described Steiner as a "polyglot and polymath". Among his admirers, Steiner is ranked "among the great minds in today's literary world". English novelist A. S. Byatt described him as a "late, late, late Renaissance man ... a European metaphysician with an instinct for the driving ideas of our time". Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature director of the British Council, described him as a "magnificent lecturer – prophetic and doom-laden [who would] turn up with half a page of scribbled notes, and never refer to them".