Frederic Raphael
Roger Scruton's Modem Philosophy (Sinclair-Stevenson, £25) was the most use- ful book I read this year: it combines verve with reliability and reminds us that, with the decline (end?) of ideology, it is not a bad idea to think for oneself, with a little help from a caustic but honest pundit who knows the course backwards Alain de Botton's smart-ass little novel, The Roman- tic Movement (Macmillan, £14.99), com- bines philosophical investigation with the ars amatoria and drove a new fork into this well-dug plot. James Diggle's wittily effu- sive Cambridge Orations 1982-1993 (CUP, £8.95) prove that Latin can also be a resus- citated language. With their tactful — but not always complete — en regard versions, these encomia both flatter and deceive. Julia Kristeva's Le Temps Sensible (Galli- mard) is a powerfully intelligent re-vision of Proust; a luminous addition to the very stout critical corpus.
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