Psychology Today Magazine, 1978, for War on the Mindĭaily Mail, 1990, for Wisdom and Strength To study the psychiatric profession and its links to the administration of justice United States Government Bursary “for future world leaders” He lives in London where his interests include theatre, opera and fishing. He has published twelve books of non-fiction and seven novels, some under the pen name of Mackenzie Ford.

He has published three exposes in the world of art and antiquities and from 1997 to 2007 was a Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He returned to London to write a column about the art world for the Observer and then at The Sunday Times. He wrote the daily Diary column of the London Times before becoming that paper’s New York correspondent. Unfortunately, for all the book's breadth, Watson's workmanlike approach has the feel of a handful of school assignments cobbled together from encyclopedia articles rather than of work drawn from years of thoughtful reflection and an intimate acquaintance with, and love of, ideas.Peter Watson was educated at the universities of Durham, London and Rome, and was awarded scholarships in Italy and the United States.Īfter a stint as Deputy Editor of New Society magazine, he was for four years part of the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ team of investigative journalists.

Watson's rich narrative covers every corner of intellectual life in the 20th century, yet the style is so breezy and anecdotal that it lacks the deep learned elegance of a history of ideas by, for example, Isaiah Berlin or Jacques Barzun. He also briefly examines the significance of a wide range of political and cultural movements, such as socialism, communism, fascism, feminism and environmentalism. Leavis to Jacques Derrida), art (Picasso to Warhol), economics (Milton Friedman to John Kenneth Galbraith), science (Linus Pauling to E.O. At a frenetic pace, he gallops through the modern intellectual landscape, pausing long enough to graze the founts of philosophy (from Wittgenstein to Richard Rorty to Alasdair MacIntyre), literature (Kafka, Woolf, Mann, Rushdie), literary criticism (F.R. British journalist Watson's (War on the Mind The Caravaggio Conspiracy etc.)panoramic survey traces various 20th-century ideas and their power to bend and shape society and individuals. Just as the 20th century dawned with an unparalleled optimism regarding the moral, social and scientific progress of humanity, it ended with an unshakeable confidence in the promises of technology and the power of free-market economics to deliver a better life for all humankind.

The modern mind by peter watson