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“... in new philosophical work. In his informative preface to Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, Brian McGuinness quotes from a letter that Wittgenstein wrote to John Maynard Keynes in 1924: ‘You ask in your letter whether you could do anything to make it possible for me to return to scientific work. The answer is, No: there’s nothing that can be ...”

“... Brian McGuinness has edited and compiled many collections of writings by Wittgenstein and about him, and his 1988 biography, reissued a few years ago as Young Ludwig, as well as being a fascinating account of Wittgenstein’s life up until 1921, also provides one of the best short introductions to the ideas and the style of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ...”

“... And that question remains after one has read, with frequent admiration and thanks, Volume One of Brian McGuinness’s Wittgenstein: A Life. McGuinness brings more detail and documentation to his portrayal of ‘Young Ludwig (1889-1921)’ than any previous memoir or account. But those who have wanted to acquaint ...”

“... Wittgenstein to John Maynard Keynes: When I saw you last I was confirmed in a view which had arisen in me last term already: you then made it very clear to me that you were tired of my conversation etc. Now please don’t think that I mind that! Why shouldn’t you be tired of me, I don’t believe for a moment that I can be entertaining or interesting to you ...”

“... In​ November 1910 a Jewish engineer at Victoria University in Manchester obtained a patent for a new kind of aeronautical propeller. He was just 21, and well on the way to achieving his childhood dream of becoming the greatest aviator since Orville and Wilbur Wright. But he hesitated. He had been reading Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell in his spare time, and believed that their inquiries into the foundations of logic heralded a revolution even more exciting than the invention of powered flight ...”

“... only four years after the German volume, but 44 years after the collection was originally made. McGuinness has omitted from the English version all those frustrating pages which, in the German one, recorded the dates of letters now lost, together with a certain number of letters with no philosophical or mathematical content. The volume contains much of ...”

“... or continue as a front for the IRA. Ignoring renewed protestations from Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness that Sinn Fein is separate from the IRA, that it is a political party with a democratic mandate from its voters, most politicians and observers have, like Major himself, accepted almost without question the Unionist formulation: Sinn Fein/IRA. They do ...”

“... Penguin, Picador, Harvill or Faber anthologies. The editors give us a spread of generations, from Brian Coffey (1905-95) and Jonathan Griffin (1906-90) to Catherine Walsh (b. 1964) and Fred D’Aguiar (b. 1960), and represent a wide diversity of poetic practices. They also tell us the names of another fifty-odd poets they would have liked to put in ...”

“... Federal Police can take in relation to the allegations. In view of the fact that Milgate/McGuinness have already advised the Indian authorities of their suspicions there seems little point in Australian Federal Police contacting them.’ These allegations and suspicions related to the world of drug scams and their masterminds and mules (or ...”

“... enthusiasm for armed struggle among hardline Republicans. During the Dublin debate, the historian Brian Hanley made a point that seems unanswerable to me, as it must to the majority of those whose backing the ‘dissidents’ (a label they have always rejected) seek: if the British establishment wasn’t prepared to withdraw in 1972, when the Provos killed a ...”

“... secret back-channel talks with Catholic priests, the Derry businessman Brendan Duddy, and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin. After Mountbatten’s murder in August 1979 and the killing, hours later, of 18 soldiers at Warrenpoint – the army’s heaviest single loss in Northern Ireland – Thatcher asked Maurice Oldfield, the recently retired head of MI6, to ...”

“... On The World at One, Sir Patrick Mayhew was invited to respond to a (dubbed) interview with Martin McGuinness in which Sinn Fein’s vice-president had said the ceasefire would endure ‘in all circumstances’. Mayhew said he thought what Martin had had to say was of great interest. Martin? Does this signify something? Meanwhile, in Belfast, reporters were ...”

“... of the DUP and VUPP, formed in 1974, to bring down the Sunningdale Agreement according to which Brian Faulkner, the then-UUP leader, agreed to share power with moderate Nationalists. Faulkner’s compromise was too much for the UUC – the governing body of the UUP. When Faulkner was ditched by the UUC, he took his followers in the UUP and went off to found ...”

“... position is similar to that of many recent liberals writing in the analytical tradition, such as Brian Barry, John Rawls and Charles Larmore. These writers argue that, by their nature, conceptions of the good – theocratic, secularist, vegan, carnivorous, lesbian, polygamous, socialist, libertarian or whatever – give us insufficient reason to conclude ...”

“... were both a few years ahead of him at St Columb’s Catholic Grammar School (where John Hume and Brian Friel had also been pupils), he belonged to the first generation to have access to free secondary schooling after the war. He went to university at Queen’s in Belfast, spent time in London, and by the mid-1960s was back in Derry, fired up by ...”