It is easy to dismiss this as clichéd; easy but wrong. We forget how parochial and insular British literary culture was before the 1960s. Leavis, Empson and Eliot, our most famous critics, wrote about English literature from the Metaphysical poets and Milton to D.H. Lawrence and Dickens. Who wrote about German-speaking literary culture? Steiner tells Adler that he wrote “the first article written in English on Paul Celan”. In one paragraph in this new book he cites Celan, Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the following chapter he writes about Wagner, Gadamer and Husserl. He introduced countless English readers to the great figures and ideas of European modernism. And yet, and this is a fascinating paradox, he made his home in Britain, “the chosen land for me.”

Steiner’s other great legacy is that he helped break the silence in post-war English culture about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Through fiction (the stories in Anno Domini and The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.) and through criticism (Language and Silence and In Bluebeard’s Castle) Steiner urged us to reflect on the legacy of the Holocaust. These concerns weave through the conversations, leading to his controversial views on Israel. “I am fundamentally anti-Zionist,” he says. Judaism “is far greater than Israel”. It is a view that has lost him many friends.

Of course, there were other important émigré critics who came to Britain and America: Erich Heller, J.P. Stern and Gabriel Josipovici, Geoffrey Hartman and Paul de Man at Yale. Arguably they were better critics and scholars. As A Long Saturday makes clear, however, they were not as wide-ranging or as provocative in their concerns. Steiner has always been a great provocateur, a passionate polemicist.

This is what has made him such an outsider. “Why don’t many of my university colleagues like me very much?” he asks at one point. “Why have I been somewhat marginalised all of my life?” He says it is because he puts the great creators ahead of the critics and commentators. That’s not true. He has been marginalised because he asks difficult, even offensive questions. Why are women less creative than men? What explains the “mystery of Jewish intellectual excellence”? “Why are 70 per cent of all Nobel Prize winners in the sciences Jews? Why are 90 per cent of all chess masters Jews . . . ?” In a culture where people tread carefully about racial and sexual difference, Steiner is a bull in a china shop. There is another reason. In a culture increasingly obsessed with equality, Steiner is the last of the great elitists. He is unapologetic about this. He is fascinated by genius: chess players, mathematicians and classical composers, Nobel Prize winners and great writers.

Those familiar with Steiner’s work will find little here that is new or fresh. However, if you want a short, clear introduction to one of our most thought-provoking critics this is a welcome reminder of Steiner’s achievements. Towards the end, the mood darkens. He is approaching 90. It is hard to imagine we will ever see his like again.