In his life Raymond Williams played many parts: child of the Black Mountains, inspirational adult lecturer, Cambridge professor, folk hero and guru of the Left. After his death, he remained a symbolic figure and his classic works, Culture and Society, The Long Revolution and The Country and the City continue to inspire generations all over the world. In this first major biography, Fred Inglis has spoken to those who knew this complex and charismatic man at every stage of his life, from his boyhood years in the Welsh border country to his brief years of retirement. Through their voices and his own passionate and at times combative engagement with his subject, he tells a story of a life not just for its time but for our own. After Thatcher and Reagan, after the cold war, Williams still has much to teach us about the nature of a good and just society and about the constant struggle to attain it.