Noam Chomsky has been voted the world’s top public intellectual in a poll. “Chomsky, who was underwhelmed by the honour, beat off challenges from Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins, Vaclav Havel and Christopher Hitchens to win the Prospect/Foreign Policy poll. More than 20,000 voters from around the world took part in selecting the winners from a list of 100. The most striking aspect of the list is the shortage of the young, the female and the French.”