followed a brief period of relaxation of Soviet controls on intellectual activity which had taken place from the mid-1960s until the early 1970s. Leaving Soviet Union and career at SOAS, University of London Departing the Soviet Union in 1974 for Israel, Piatigorsky made his way to Oxford University where he had been invited to give some lectures. But early times in London were severe for his family (at the moment of departure he has some children and pregnant wife). He arrived to London in the summer and had no normal job, he earned only 6.5 pounds a day. He accepted some invitations to lecture, but decided to stay in London. At Oxford he quickly became acquainted with Isaiah Berlin and Leszek Kołakowski. He joined the staff of the School of Oriental and African Studies, The University of London, as lecturer in 1975 with the commendation of Berlin who at one point is reported to have said: "Piatigorsky is quite simply a genius!" It is remarkable that Piatigorski didn't consider himself a dissident, he left Soviet Union just because he was bored, he felt that something was missing there. While at SOAS, Piatigorsky wrote numerous journal articles and Introductions and chapters to books in various academic fields. He wrote several larger scholarly works including: The Buddhist Philosophy of Thought (1984), Mythological Deliberations (1993), and Who's Afraid of Freemasons? (1997). The work on Freemasonry was a bestselling book on the sociology and philosophy of religious belief. In 1991, he was made Professor of the Ancient History of South Asia, a position from which he retired in 2001 as Emeritus Professor. During the final two decades of his life, Piatigorsky wrote a number of philosophical novels in Russian, one of which earned him the Andrei Bely prize in 2000. His first, The Philosophy of a Small Street, was published in Moscow in 1994. The book was well-received, further establishing his reputation in Russian intellectual circles, while placing him in the forefront of public consciousness. Remember the Strange Person (1999) and An Ancient Man in the City (2001) followed. As a novelist he joins the select company of those few philosophers who successfully managed to cross over into the world of literature, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Umberto Eco, and Alexander Zinoviev. He also crossed over successfully into the world of cinema. He was made the subject of 'Philosopher Escaped' (2005) a documentary film