Perhaps, however, the experience of 1971 was enough to make the prize organisers think twice about including so many free-thinking intellectual heavyweights again.

Debates were conducted in broad daylight by intellectual heavyweights who took their ideas and opponents seriously enough to present arguments carefully, with wit and gravitas.

Britain's intellectual heavyweights have woven a dispute of such imponderables, sublime and ridiculous.

For a few hours on most afternoons, though, they meet at the Hermitage to argue and flirt - and Bradbury does his best to reconstruct the sparring between these intellectual and despotic heavyweights.

Miller introduced Luhnow to intellectual heavyweights and public figures who shared the businessmen's hostility to machine politics.

Looks like the intellectual heavyweights are out in force tonight.

Are these really the intellectual heavyweights of the left?

This is barely a criticism: few artists claim to be intellectual heavyweights.

The founding conference took place from May 25-31, 1955; Martin Buber, Ernst Simon and Gershom Scholem were some of the intellectual heavyweights present.

"These are two of the intellectual heavyweights among neoconservatives, and their dispute is real," said Gary Rosen, managing editor of Commentary.