Mary Warnock - Mary Warnock

Mary Warnock first entered the public eye in 1982 when Margaret Thatcher, impressed with her intellect, made her Chairman of the highly charged Enquiry into Human Fertilization. In this book she reflects on the places and societies in which she has lived and the people that have influenced her, as well as on her marriage to Geoffrey Warnock - tutor in philosophy and Principal of Hertford College who was later to become Vice Chancellor of Oxford University. She describes the heyday years of the 50s and 60s during which the school of philosophy at Oxford flourished and her contemporaries included such names as Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Isaiah Berlin, Peter Strawson, David Pears, Elizabeth Anscombe and Rachel Trickett. In 1985 she left Oxford to become Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, where life changed radically and she was swept up into a more public world. Her dislike of Cambridge society and comments on the changing nature of the educational system under Thatcher are particularly trenchant.