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{{quote|made astonishing feats in the school's Junior Debating Society and the School Union Society. The rapid, even flow of his ideas, the succession of confident references to authors whom most of his contemporaries had never heard, left them mildly stupefied. Yet there was no backlash, no resentment at these breathless marathons, because Berlin's essential modesty and good manners eliminated jealousy and disarmed hostility.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bonavia|first=Michael|title=London Before I Forget|date=1990|publisher=The Self Publishing Association Ltd.|page=29}}</ref>}}
After leaving St Paul's, Berlin applied to [[Balliol College, Oxford]], but was denied admission after a chaotic interview. Berlin decided to apply again, only to a different college: [[Corpus Christi College, Oxford]]. Berlin was admitted and commenced his ''[[literae humaniores]]'' ''degree''. He graduated in 1928, taking first-class honours in his final examinations and winning the John Locke Prize for his performance in the philosophy papers, in which he outscored [[A. J. Ayer]].<ref name=ignatieff57>{{harvnb|Ignatieff|1998|p=57}}</ref> He subsequently took another degree at Oxford in [[philosophy, politics and economics]], again taking first-class honours after less than a year on the course. He was appointed a tutor in philosophy at [[New College, Oxford]],{{cn|date=April 2023}} and soon afterwards was elected to a prize fellowship at [[All Souls College, Oxford]], the first unconverted Jew to achieve this fellowship at All Souls.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.haaretz.com/1.5061019|title=Sir Isaiah's modest Zionism|newspaper=Haaretz}}</ref>
While still a student, he befriended Ayer (with whom he was to share a lifelong amicable rivalry), [[Stuart Hampshire]], [[Richard Wollheim]], [[Maurice Bowra]], [[Roy Beddington]], [[Stephen Spender]], [[Inez Pearn]], [[J. L. Austin]] and [[Nicolas Nabokov]]. In 1940, he presented a philosophical paper on other minds to a meeting attended by [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] at Cambridge University. Wittgenstein rejected the argument of his paper in discussion but praised Berlin for his intellectual honesty and integrity. Berlin was to remain at Oxford for the rest of his life, apart from a period working for [[British Information Services]] (BIS) in New York from 1940 to 1942 and for the British embassies in Washington, DC, and Moscow from then until 1946. Before crossing the Atlantic in 1940, Berlin took rest in Portugal for a few days. He stayed in [[Estoril]], at the Hotel Palácio, between 19 and 24 October 1940.<ref>[[Exiles Memorial Center]].</ref> Prior to this service, however, Berlin was barred from participation in the British war effort as a result of his being born in Latvia,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://contemporarythinkers.org/isaiah-berlin/biography/|title=A Biography of Isaiah Berlin}}</ref> and because his left arm had been damaged at birth. In April 1943 he wrote a confidential analysis of members of the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] for the [[Foreign Office]]; he described Senator [[Arthur Capper]] from Kansas as ''a solid, stolid, 78-year-old reactionary from the corn belt, who is the very voice of Mid-Western "grass root" isolationism''.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/singles/bib139a/bib139a.pdf |title=American Profiles on Capitol Hill: A Confidential Study for the British Foreign Office in 1943 |author=Hachey, Thomas E. |journal=Wisconsin Magazine of History |date=Winter 1973–1974 |volume=57 |issue=2 |pages=141–153 |jstor=4634869 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131021185357/http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/singles/bib139a/bib139a.pdf |archive-date=21 October 2013 }}</ref>
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