A man of prodigious learning, unflagging mental energy, and acutely original sensibility he has established his credentials as aestheticism, literary and theatre critic, sociologist, metapsychologist, social critic, historian of ideas, and cultural journalist. Evaluation at this virtually unclassifiable level of achievement may seem frivolous. Still I would argue that Bathes is the most consistently intelligent, important, and useful critic stretching that term - to have emerged anywhere in the last fifteen years.