James Ward

21st Century Philosophy uses selected popular texts as a window through which to examine contemporary social and cultural issues. What are the long-term prospects for 'New Atheism'? On balance, is the United States chiefly a force for good, or is it bent on hegemony? Is the optimism of the Enlightenment a historical curiosity, or can it be revived? To what extent can quality fiction enlarge the modern imagination, and how far are we stuck in a rut of banality? What is the connection between academic ideals and the proliferation of kitsch? What light can Rousseau or Russell, Hume or Heidegger, Schopenhauer or Sartre shed on these sorts of questions - if any? The book consists of eight essays that can be read in any order.The author has a master's degree and a DPhil, both in Philosophy.

Twenty-five poems covering subjects like the difference between Cow Parsley and Hogweed, the ghosts of Pevensey Castle, school exams, the history of flies, Rawls's Veil of Ignorance, train journeys to distant universes, Jack O'Kent, eviction, Humphrey Bogart, and shopping.Buy it now while copies last.

The Latest Noel is a collection of poems on subjects as diverse as British Summer Time, car boot sales, the 20th century thinker Georges Bataille, the connection between bird watching and waterfalls and Marxism, Valentine's Day, English folklore, Magpies, extraterrestrials visiting the Earth, and Christmas. If you're a fan of the 'I feel pain more deeply and sensitively than anyone who's ever lived' type of verse, it probably won't be your cup of tea. But if you're not ... well, who knows?

Is justice best understood as flowing from a social contract, or is there something else going on? How can we explain the many divergent notions of justice throughout history? Is it even possible to give a separate account of justice (as opposed to, say, social convention or morality)? These are some of the questions considered in A New Theory of Justice. But there are other essays in here, other questions, and other (tentative) answers. Is it possible to talk about 'God' anymore? What kinds of minds do animals have, and how could we ever find out? And what about free-will: is it just a story we tell ourselves to help us navigate life and stay sane? Or not? The author has a master's degree and a DPhil, both in Philosophy.

21st Century Philosophy uses selected popular texts as a window through which to examine contemporary social and cultural issues. What are the long-term prospects for 'New Atheism'? On balance, is the United States chiefly a force for good, or is it bent on hegemony? Is the optimism of the Enlightenment a historical curiosity, or can it be revived? To what extent can quality fiction enlarge the modern imagination, and how far are we stuck in a rut of banality? What is the connection between academic ideals and the proliferation of kitsch? What light can Rousseau or Russell, Hume or Heidegger, Schopenhauer or Sartre shed on these sorts of questions - if any? The book consists of eight essays that can be read in any order, with a combined length of over 80,000 words.The author has a master's degree and a DPhil, both in Philosophy.

Twenty-five poems covering subjects like the difference between Cow Parsley and Hogweed, the ghosts of Pevensey Castle, school exams, the history of flies, Rawls's Veil of Ignorance, train journeys to distant universes, Jack O'Kent, eviction, Humphrey Bogart, and shopping. Buy it now while copies last.

The Latest Noel is a collection of poems on subjects as diverse as British Summer Time, car boot sales, the 20th century thinker Georges Bataille, the connection between bird watching and waterfalls and Marxism, Valentine's Day, English folklore, Magpies, extraterrestrials visiting the Earth, and Christmas. If you're a fan of the 'I feel pain more deeply and sensitively than anyone who's ever lived' type of verse, it probably won't be your cup of tea. But if you're not ... well, who knows?

After an acrimonious US election whose outcome Moscow may or may not have influenced, can it really be that a few maverick intelligence agents from Russia and the United States are fighting a discreet battle-to-the-death on some of London's back streets? And that the corpses are piling up, out of sight of the British police? Or is that just more "fake news"? ... Well, luckily, no it isn't. Not yet, anyway, because the media still hasn't heard about it. But that could change. When MI7 agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate, he uncovers a veritable Schr dinger's Cat state of affairs in which the relevant facts are neither wholly present nor entirely absent. And where some of the evidence lies closer to home than is comfortable. Along the way, he is forced to address one of history's oldest questions. Just what is the truth anyway, and why do we care?

A cabal of Russian oligarchs instigates unrest in the far east of Russia as the first stage of an attempt to unseat Vladimir Putin. Britain offers covert support in the form of five MI7 agents. The disturbances mirror those in Eastern Ukraine and, if pushed far enough, might persuade the Kremlin to retract its territorial interests in Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia. However, once the five operatives are shipped east, events take an unexpected turn. One by one, they begin to disappear. Enter Grey Department's John Mordred, by grudging consensus, MI7's best agent. Young, idiosyncratic and a linguistic genius, Mordred prefers diplomacy to battle, doing the right thing to defending the realm. Yet he won't necessarily duck a confrontation. Especially when the lives of his co-agents are at stake.

Something's not right aboard the cruise ship Aurora. Yet that's probably what you would think when you're with the girl you love and everyone else is about fifty years your senior. You're three thousand miles from home, young, and high on emotion. Maybe it just ratchets up the sense of adventure. And yet perhaps something really is wrong. There's the passenger everyone thought was dead, but who reappears one evening in the lounge without comment or explanation. And eighty-year-old Celia Soper who reads Tarot cards, but only for 'the history of the world' ... whatever that means. And then, of course, the disappearances. Which, apparently, only you two have noticed.Above all, there are the bright fish, creatures the size of dolphins that materialise unexpectedly, at intervals, alongside the hull, glowing with indescribable colours. And which never seem to inspire the sort of delight one might expect. The Bright Fish deals with the meaning of love, and life, and ultimately, death. Are we always essentially alone, or is true interdependency possible? Is death our beginning or end? Or both? Conversely, is the truth stranger than we can possibly imagine?

London, 2016, and the lead-up to the EU referendum. The liberal consensus in Europe is breaking down and no one knows exactly what will replace it. As always, there are those with an eye on the main chance. In the course of investigating the disappearance of a prominent Eurosceptic MP, MI7 agent John Mordred finds himself under hostile scrutiny from obscure figures within his own organisation. It quickly turns out that his investigation and theirs may not be entirely independent of each other. Behind all the intrigues, arguments and accusations, much greater, darker forces are coming into play. Forces whose existence hardly anyone suspects. ... Yet. And the stakes are high enough to make even MI7's best agent dispensable. Set (and written) in the run-up to the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership, The New Europeans deals with the shifting global power-balance in the second decade of the 21st century.

A 51-year-old pub landlord from Hammersmith, a DJ from Lambeth, a prize-winning novelist influenced by Charles Dickens and Iain Sinclair, a young British intelligence officer: just four of the ten contenders in 2018's truly fabulous 'Ultimate Londoner' competition With a 5 million prize-pot and an awards ceremony on the top floor of The Gherkin, it's the last word in up-to-the-minute kudos. Or perhaps not. To begin with, no one has the faintest idea where it came from. Or how it garnered so much publicity. And not even the 'candidates' themselves know how they were selected. For the intelligence officer, John Mordred, its unsolicited exposure is profoundly unwelcome. So far, so irritating. But then the candidates start dying. As Mordred investigates, the truth slowly emerges. And it's stranger and more shocking than anyone could possibly have imagined.

Prem Sharma's wedding to Nasreen Sanim collapses when she uncharacteristically bows to her conscience and exits the ceremony. After wandering alone to Middlesbrough town centre, he bumps into Ursula Petulengov , an illegal migrant who manages to convince him she's someone she's not. Warming to her, despite his ordeal, and dimly sensing her true predicament, he invites her to stay with him on a friends-only basis. She accepts. Fast forward a few months, and all three are beleaguered by a network of women-traffickers who will stop at nothing to expand their empire. If that means torturing Prem to death, and forcing Ursula and Nasreen into sex-slavery, so be it. Given that their survival depends upon it, can our three protagonists learn to cooperate? Can they do even better, and take the fight to the enemy? And just what is the 'weird problem of good' anyway?

Everyone knows UK general elections aren't what they used to be. British politics - Westminster in particular - is mired in an integrity crisis. Enter Real Alternative, a bold new party with a youthful, charismatic leader and a radical manifesto. True, it stands to win very few seats, but what really matters is that it has galvanised the young and apathetic. And it apparently has the establishment running scared. Yet there may be more to it than meets the eye. For a start, who's funding it? No one quite knows. If its backers are foreign, that would constitute a clear breach of electoral commission rules - which would please a lot of people in Whitehall.Agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate. And what looks at first like a routine probe soon becomes anything but.

Charles Swinter is eighty. When his estranged wife dies, he decides to go to Thailand and find a bride. He's not ready to die yet. Not by any means. Edward Grant, his best friend, is young enough to be his grandson. When the old man goes missing, Edward travels halfway across the world to find him. Yet what happens next is not so straightforward. The demands of conscience, murder, mental disturbances, reports of ghosts, a sham marriage, wrongful imprisonment, a slew of irreversibly changed lives.The House of Charles Swinter is an epic romance. It concerns human dignity, the relationship between the sexes, goodness and beauty, poverty and wealth, globalisation, tradition and modernity.And one man and woman.

The last instalment in the Tales of MI7 series Ruby's Parker's retirement hangs like a dark cloud over MI7. She herself has only a vague idea what the future might hold - both personally, and in terms of national security. But for many of her team, she's irreplaceable. To cap it all, there's a massive organisational overhaul on the cards at Thames House. Everyone's nervous, and with good reason. In the middle of all this uncertainty, there's an assassin at large. He's already murdered a British returnee from Syria who claimed to have 'information' about the latest Russian plot to destabilise Western Europe. He may also be pursuing her sole British confidante. And he's definitely seeking an American secret servicewoman named Daisy Hallenbeck. There are reasons to think Daisy knows precisely what's going on but, disturbingly, she seems to have fallen off the map. Not even the US embassy knows where she is. John Mordred is assigned to investigate. He finds himself up against the clock in a completely unconventional way. Among his top priorities is that Ruby Parker doesn't leave MI7 with the words 'unsolved case' against her name.

Thames house is expecting an eccentric new recruit in the person of Chasha Jones, self-described (only partly tongue-in-cheek) as "the most intelligent woman in London." But on the day she's due to start work, there's no sign of her. Shockingly, it turns out she's joined an obscure cult run by an eccentric Briton called Hector Raynebow. Raynebow used to be a dedicated eco-warrior, but he's ditched environmentalism on the grounds that humanity, in its present form, isn't capable of saving the world: the rot has gone too farYet no need to worry, he has a solution: Humankind 2.0, a new type of human being, developed by cutting-edge gene technology. John Mordred is assigned to investigate. But of course, he's not the only one. And to make things even cosier, the investigators are explicitly briefed not to get on with each other.

When Ruby Parker, Head of MI7's Red Department, is hospitalised by a burglar, all is not as it seems. Her removal coincides with a series of catastrophes for British spies in hostile territories abroad, and some very shifty behaviour by the new Acting Head of Red Department, Patrick Atherton. Atherton dislikes Red's established hierarchy, which includes all its officers without exception, and possibly John Mordred in particular. But then things take a turn for the strange. Atherton has an apparent breakdown; he gets up from his desk, leaves Thames House and apparently goes off radar. Important men and women across London start dying in violent circumstances. It simultaneously transpires that the mysterious Black Department is taking a close interest in all this. And not quite from its usual distance.Suddenly, John Mordred himself becomes the focus of intensely hostile scrutiny. And when he, too, goes off radar, it's because he no longer has a choice. For a while, nothing seems to make sense. Then, shockingly, it does.

2019. Russia's Web Brigades have created a divided West, but the European and the American intelligence services are getting wise to their tactics. When Stanislav Kuznetsov, the FSB's Director of Overseas Strategic Affairs, entrusts a group of young idealists with the task of devising the next phase in the disruption of Russia's enemies, little does he suspect that six weeks later, they'll come up with a plan to suborn the British Broadcasting Corporation. His first reaction is mingled incredulity and exasperation. Have they taken leave of their senses? But then he studies the details. And actually, it's not as far-fetched as it looks. In fact it's entirely workable. When news of the plot reaches Britain, MI7 agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate. He quickly finds himself dealing with influential people in his own country who see the BBC as more than problematic, and who would dearly like to see it cut down to size. Could they conceivably have a point? In a media-saturated age, what remains of the corporation's historic remit to inform, educate and entertain? Is it still capable of living up to that lofty ideal, or is it not longer fit for purpose?

After a chance skirmish with an armed killer in central London, agent John Mordred ends up in hospital, condition critical. Six weeks and a full recovery later, he's persuaded it's purely a police matter, one he should forget about. But nothing in MI7 is ever that simple. There's more to this particular incident than meets the eye and unnamed people in high places want it investigating. They believe Mordred's the man for the job. Add to the mix five missing IMF officials, the kidnapping of a top British financier in Venezuela, evidence of a related cover-up in Whitehall, a young and unpredictable London Lord Mayor with acute delusions of grandeur, plus - most bizarrely - persistent rumours of local UFO sightings. Things threaten to spin radically out of control.