Jonathan Ree

The wartime adventures of the legendary SOE agent Harry Rée, told in his own words“A beautiful collection of writings by schoolmaster-turned-secret agent Harry Rée. . . . Memoirs, postwar broadcasts and letters from French comrades combine to paint a picture of everyday heroism, treachery and tragedy.”—Robert Gildea, author of Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance“In a book devoted to heroism in its true, self-effacing form, that modesty seems entirely appropriate, and is a tribute both to Ree and to the son who put it together.”—Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times A pacifist school teacher at the start of the war, Harry Rée changed his mind with the fall of France in 1940. He was deployed into a secret branch of the British army and parachuted into central France in April 1943. He soon won the confidence of local resisters and directed a series of dramatic sabotage operations. Rée’s memoirs, superbly edited by his son, the philosopher Jonathan Rée, offer unique insights into life in the French Resistance, and into the anxiety, folly and pity of war.

Questions and answers from two great philosophers Why is laughter contagious? Why do mountains exist? Why do we long for the past, even if it is scarred by suffering? Spanning a vast array of subjects that range from the philosophical to the theological, from the philological to the scientific, The Philosopher Responds is the record of a set of questions put by the litterateur Abu ?ayyan al-Taw?idi to the philosopher and historian Abu ?Ali Miskawayh. Both figures were foremost contributors to the remarkable flowering of cultural and intellectual life that took place in the Islamic world during the reign of the Buyid dynasty in the fourth/tenth century. The correspondence between al-Taw?idi and Miskawayh holds a mirror to many of the debates of the time and reflects the spirit of rationalistic inquiry that animated their era. It also provides insight into the intellectual outlooks of two thinkers who were divided as much by their distinctive temperaments as by the very different trajectories of their professional careers. Alternately whimsical and tragic, trivial and profound, al-Taw?idi's questions provoke an interaction as interesting in its spiritedness as in its content. An English-only edition.

'Astonishing ... enjoy its riches slowly, and savour every generous, erudite and undogmatic page' Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times'We English men have wits,' wrote the clergyman Ralph Lever in 1573, and, 'we have also framed unto ourselves a language.'Witcraft is a fresh and brilliant history of how philosophy became established in English. It presents a new form of philosophical storytelling and challenges what Jonathan Rée calls the 'condescending smugness' of traditional histories of philosophy. Rée tells the story of philosophy as it was lived and practised, embedded in its time and place, by men and women from many walks of life, engaged with the debates and culture of their age. And, by focusing on the rich history of works in English, including translations, he shows them to be quite as colourful, diverse, inventive and cosmopolitan as their continental counterparts.Witcraft offers new and compelling intellectual portraits not only of celebrated British and American philosophers, such as Hume, Emerson, Mill and James, but also of the remarkable philosophical work of literary authors, such as William Hazlitt and George Eliot, as well as a carnival of overlooked characters - priests and poets, teachers, servants and crofters, thinking for themselves and reaching their own conclusions about religion, politics, art and everything else.The book adopts a novel structure, examining its subject at fifty-year intervals from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. Researched over decades and illuminated by quotations from extensive archival material, it is a book full of stories and personalities as well as ideas, and shows philosophy springing from the life around it. Witcraft overturns the established orthodoxies of the history of philosophy, and celebrates the diversity, vitality and inventiveness of philosophical thought.

Since 1997, David Batchelor has been photographing single square and rectangle planes of uninterrupted white that he passes as he walks through London and places he visits. The images are informal and impromptu; shot from a uniform distance the white planes are seen on a diversity of backdrops: brick walls, car doors, metal fences and more. Batchelor began this body of work after considering the history of the monochrome in painting, and the lack of skill associated with them in the work of Yves Klein and Ad Reinhardt, amongst others. Bringing together the largest group of photographs from this series, a conversation between the philosopher Jonathan Rée and the artist focuses on the importance of monochromes to ideas of modernity, artificiality and the city.

The author offers a philosophical history of the human voice, noting how many leading thinkers of the age, particularly Freud, have viewed the voice as an outward expression of the soul, believing that careful listening to a voice, would lay bare the innermost fears and desires of its owner.