504 Reviews human brain (or in artefacts such as books or pictures) and stored in itsmemory, capable of being copied to another individual's brain thatwill store and replicate it' (p. 4). Memes must be able to replicate and pass on cultural, as opposed to genetic, information faithfullyover long periods of time. This, he argues, is precisely what fairy tales do. The biological analogy isnot unproblematic. For instance, while itmight explain why certain tales such as 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Cinderella' have endured, itdoes not account for those that are popular in one period or culture but then fall from favour. Just as not all fairytales have the same capacity topass on information,many works outside the fairy-tale tradition are highlymemetic. A more useful way of think ingabout thisquality is found inRetelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story andMetanarratives inChildren's Literature (New York and London: Garland, I998), by John Stephens and Robyn McCallum. Their exploration of tales that are repeat edly told encompassing myths, legends, Bible stories, and fairy tales-concludes that such stories reproduce a set of values thatunderpin the ethos and power struc tures thathave governed Western culture for the lastmillennium. While there areweaknesses inZipes's biological take on the staying power of fairy tales,my students are finding itexciting and provocative. It is an achievement toget largenumbers of undergraduates arguing about the importance of fairy tales,but that has been the result of teachingWhy Fairy Tales Stick for the firsttime.Additionally, the book benefits from JackZipes's many years of scholarly engagement with the genre. His case studies may focus on the best-known tales, but thevariants included arewell chosen and thebibliography is a rich resource. The book also provides several useful thumbnail introductions tokey theorists,encourages transdisciplinary ways of thinking and working, and takes into account themany forms and formats inwhich stories are now transmitted. Altogether, then,Why Fairy Tales Stick isboth awelcome addition to the expand ing area of books about fairy tales and a useful teaching resource. NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY KIMBERLEY REYNOLDS AbsentMinds: Intellectuals inBritain. By STEFAN COLLINI. Oxford: Oxford Univer sity Press. 2006. ix+526 pp. ?25. ISBN 978-0-I9-929105-2. Stefan Collini sets out an argument questioning what he calls the 'absence thesis' the familiar argument thatBritain does not have, or has not had, intellectuals as other countries have had them, especially France. He shows this view to be misguided, a prejudice repeated indifferentcountries (a fullhundred pages of thebook are devoted toEurope and theUSA). He claims thatpart of the structure of intellectual life in Britain is theneed todeny the presence of intellectuals (often seen as left-wing,or as impractical). He hasmuch to say about intellectuals and theDreyfus case,much on the intelligentsia, and much on Julien Benda's La Trahison des clercs (I927). With these arguments, the book is excellent, thoroughly researched, full of unexpected discus sions of half-forgotten names, movements, and periodicals, provoking further study. At the same time, it iscontentious. Professor Collini's way is to indicate that intel lectuals have always-since the term came into use in the late nineteenth century been seen in the same pattern. The history that he writes is of the same processes repeating themselves, the presence of theword 'intellectual' transforming people's responses in predictable ways. In that sense, adherence to structure produces argu ments strikingly formalist,where what intellectuals argue for isabsent from the text. If the situation and thedebate around intellectuals is as he says, it leaves littleground forsayingwhether things have changed, or got better orworse. His implied answer that things aremuch the same, and so everywhere-leaves out toomuch, producing, MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 505 among other things, thebland discussion of currentmedia intellectuals and celebrities ofChapter 21. Should thewriting, whose gravity isoccasionally suspended by heavy handed humour, presumably ironic,be so disengaged fromdebate about the status of ideas inpublic life?Or between intellectuals and intellectuals: Derrida and thatho norary Cambridge degree (not discussed)? Questions accumulate when one considers what the book leaves out, despite its length, and what itdoes contain. The only in tellectuals it really discusses are Eliot, Collingwood, Orwell, A. J.P.Taylor, and A. J. Ayer.About nearly all of these, therewere no...