Most people know George Bernard Shaw as a dramatist and social reformer, but they are often surprised to discover that he was also the most brilliant British music critic to emerge in the late-nineteenth century. His vision of the ideal critic was not a passive reporter of musical events, but rather a vital and initiating force within the music…

The article talks about how--and whether--"English" can justify itself as an academic discipline, and about the pressures on it to do so. In the search for justification, is it the creative writer or the critic who provides the crucial element of value? Particular reference is made to the tradition of English at Cambridge, where the…