The daughter of a pacifist rector who answered ‘no!’ when his congregation asked him ‘Is everything in the bible true?’, perhaps Mary Midgley was destined to become a philosopher. Yet few would have thought this iinquisitive, untidy, nature-loving child would become ‘one of the sharpest critical pens in the West’.

Plainly told, like her philosophy, this is an elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching all too rarely acknowledged today.