TEXT:

From Alan Ryan, New College, Oxford, OX1 3BN
telephone (0865) (Int:44-865) 248451

Dear Henry,

I've now read Andrew Malcolm and have surprised myself by changing my mind about it. I think it's rather good. It's variable, and it looks to me as if it is vastly too long as it stands, but I'm rather keen that we should have a go if it's possible. It would, I think, be a plausible general book, and it might do well as a sort of introduction to philosophy for people doing 'A' Level philosophy under the new dispensation and people doing Open University courses.

It's philosophically rather good, I think - it makes one of the shrewdest cases for a sort of Collingwoodian Idealism that I've read - not that it reads like Collingwood or cites him as an authority, but that its emphasis on the way we constrain the world by deciding what sort of general laws it's to follow, and what sort of explanations it's got to conform to is rather Collingwoodian. I like the dialogue style; it clanks occasionally, but generally it is rather fun, and the two protagonists are distinct personalities - to say the least.

If I have anxieties, they are about the longish slabs of straight science, eg at the end of chapter 1, and about the interpolation of the play about Electra in the last Act; they serve a purpose all right, but I think that some readers may feel they go on too long before the author reveals their purpose. Perhaps the right thing now would be for you to try it and see whether you'd feel like putting in the effort, then ask Malcolm if he would be willing to think how he could cut it down to a size which would give it a sporting chance at the price we'd need to charge for it

ever, Alan

Go to the next item or the previous item in the Evidence (red) file. Go to Ryan's next contribution (2nd report, 18/7/85). Return to Making Names reviewed.

Go to Malcolm's Statement of Claim, to the Case History, to the Affidavits: Ivon Asquith (1), Asquith (2), Henry Hardy, William Shaw (solicitor) (1), Sir Roger Elliott (1), Margaret Goodall, to the Witness Statements: Elliott, Hardy, Richard Charkin, Nicola Bion, Goodall, to the courtroom testimony of the Oxford Six, 14/3/1990: Elliott, Goodall, Bion, Asquith, Charkin, Hardy, to the testimony of Andrew Malcolm 13/3/1990, to the Chancery Court Judgment, the Appeal Court Judgment, the Damages assessment, the Settlement agreement.

Return to the Malcolm vs. Oxford I (1984-92) Index or to the Malcolm vs. Oxford II (2001-02) Index or to the SITE INDEX.