The notion that our society, its education system and its intellectual life, is characterised by a split between two cultures - the arts or humanities on one hand, and the sciences on the other - has a long history. But it was C.P.Snow's Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began a public debate that is still raging in the media today. This reissue of The Two Cultures and its successor piece, A Second Look (in which Snow responded to the controversy four years later) has a new introduction by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists, the future for education and research, and the problem of fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are just some of the subjects discussed.