Frank Furedi is professor of sociology at University of Kent, and author of a number of books including Politics of Fear, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?, Therapy Culture, Paranoid Parenting and Culture of Fear. During the past decade his intellectual work has been devoted towards clarifying the meaning of humanism for the twenty-first century. In Politics of Fear he argues that the politics of fear thrives in an atmosphere where the exercise of human agency is regarded with suspicion if not dread – and that the alternative to this culture of misanthropy is to set about humanising our existence. To further this aim Frank has recently initiated The Manifesto Club with a group of friends and like-minded colleagues, whose stated aim is to humanise humanism, and to reclaim the creative spirit of the Enlightenment for the twenty-first century.