I WRITE books about the history of philosophy, and articles and book reviews on various topics. After studying philosophy at Cambridge University, and some graduate work at University College London, I was employed at The Economist from 1984 to 2006, latterly as the paper’s Executive Editor and founding editor of Economist.com. The first volume of my history of western philosophy, The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, was published in 2000, and the second volume, The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy, in 2016. A third volume is in preparation. My short biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein was published in 2025. I have held visiting fellowships and scholarships at Harvard University, London University and New York University, and was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford from 2017 to 2019. A more detailed CV may be found here.