As a pioneer of cultural studies and coiner of the term
"Thatcherism", Prof Stuart Hall, who died this week, was in the
truest sense a public intellectual. He was also something else: probably the
only black British intellectual who most people could readily name.
A bit of prompting might produce mention of Paul Gilroy of
King's College, author of The Empire Strikes Back and Black Atlantic, who has
recently returned to Britain after several years in America's more fertile
ebony towers. But how many other black British thinkers have a public profile?
