The legal process, at least in English law, is a quite inadequate instrument for arriving at the truth about a crime. This is not necessarily an adverse comment. There is justification for...
Books and films about terror and torture are now both more numerous and better than they used to be. The reasons for this are probably bad news. There is more to talk about. Nevertheless, it is...
For several weeks after 21 November 1974 most Irish people in Birmingham took cover. Even the most respected and entrenched felt unsafe. Outrage and grief overwhelmed the city and spread far...
In the early days of June two years ago the Indian Army was storming the Golden Temple at Amritsar, chief shrine of the Sikhs, and hundreds of lives were lost. To imagine such a thing happening...
This important theoretical work appears in a definite political context. In the United States, theories of jurisprudence are politically controversial. The public is vividly aware that the way in...
I have recently been to two valedictory parties for Oxford philosophers on the brink of emigrating to America. I spoke to another philosopher who is actively considering a munificent offer from a...
Opposite the title-page of Mr Baker’s skeletonised but substantially accurate account of John Anderson’s philosophy there stand two epigraphs. They are both from Heraclitus or, more...
The first of these books, Faith in Fakes, is a collection of essays – many of them newspaper pieces – by a ‘distinguished professor at the University of Bologna, with an...
Before Sir John Deodoran, Magus of the Scrolls, Lord Justice Clam and Lord Justice Null. Law Reporter: E.P. Thompson The Court of Appeal enforced circumlocutory injunctions restraining the...
Most professional philosophers think of themselves primarily as scholars, as hunters and gatherers in the field of understanding with no particular commitment to serve society in any other role....
‘It seems to me that nothing approaching the truth has yet been said on this subject,’ Thomas Nagel says in the middle of this complex, wide-ranging and very interesting book; and he...
In 1045 BC the Mandate of Heaven passed from the Shang to the Chou dynasty, and the sun rose on an age of gold. The tao prevailed in the land: the right path was taken, men were upright and...
This is in many ways a fine study. In over six hundred pages of lucid and carefully presented material Professor Beattie has provided an exemplary analysis of the Surrey Assize and Quarter...
If one says, as I did in ‘The Contingency of Language’, that truth is not ‘out there’, one will be suspected of relativism and irrationalism. If one suggests, as I then...
Crime is entertainment, and criminals are as much entertainers as villains. The star of London Weekend Television’s new Once a thief? is 22-year-old Michael Baillie, who began his criminal...
Conor Cruise O’Brien has enjoyed a career of variety and distinction: diplomat, politician, man of letters, an expert on Africa, Irish history and French literature. International affairs...
A few months ago, in California, I had a message that a New York Times reporter had telephoned. I conjured up a half-dozen possible reasons for the call, all of them unabashedly narcissistic,...
This is a most unusual book. It is the autobiography of a philosopher who has been as widely and deeply respected as any English-speaking philosopher now alive. Professor Quine is enjoying a...