Throughout its ten related essays, Imagining the Real contrasts our abstract imaginings about the human world with the imaginative insights provided by art and experience. It questions, variously, the relevance of game theory and sociobiology to politics; the supposed intrinsic values of liberal freedom, cultural change, and democratic action; and the claims of Marxism, deconstruction and 'Theory' generally to be non-ideological. More positively, it reinterprets fiction as a specific invitation to imagine, and celebrates Shakespeare, L.H. Myers and Beckett as truly critical, because truly imaginative, exponents of ideas.

ROBERT GRANT is Reader in English Literature at Glasgow University. A frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, he is the author of two previous books, Oakeshott and The Politics of Sex and Other Essays, and of over 100 essays, articles and reviews. He has lectured widely in the USA, Eastern Europe and Japan, and is currently writing Michael Oakeshott's 'official' biography.