Still Aldous Huxley I think, although I strongly disagree with his use of drugs as a mystical catalyst. He has been out of fashion for a long time now, but his written English is beautiful. You can usually spot the odd solecism, the occasional gauche phrase, the tiresome favourite word, in any author, but I struggle to recall any such in Huxley. Sure, most of his novels are deeply couched in the interactions of a of society now considered, and possibly rightly so in some ways, irrelevant, but the undercurrent of speculative conversation and thought he projects through his characters has always stimulated me, and continues to do so.
James Joyce has long been a favourite with me. Finnegans Wake is a glorious tapestry of every imaginable use of language, the sort of writing one can repeatedly return to over a lifetime. There is always someting new to discover and take delight in.
Most probably do not consider J. B. Priestley an intellectual, but his novels and essays are richly permeated by something way beyond the ordinary. Personal and mystical certainly, but in ways which continue to provoke the mind decades after reading him.
I find continued exposure to Hitchens and Dawkins becomes dreary after a while, despite the brilliant repartee of the former and the incisive logic of the latter. They seldom acknowledge the importance of the mystical and the numinous to the human consciousness, which after all, is still a complete mystery.
Another one I like is Douglas Hofstadter. Admittedly, I found his allegorical explanations of Turing and so on a damned sight harder to follow than reading ordinary mathematics, but in his best moments he is remarkably original and endearingly human. That self-reference might have wide and deep implication, not just in mathematical proof, but in the arts and even our brains, seems to me a pretty plausible notion.
Topic: Your Favourite Intellectuals