Plato's view that we should be ruled by philosophers has never really caught on in Britain. Indeed, in recent years, political attitudes to the study of philosophy have resulted in the closure of departments of philosophy in our universities, so that the subject is less studied at undergraduate level than it was 20 or 30 years ago. So it is surprising that the way our generation thinks about education, genetic experimentation, broadcasting, and some of the other most contentious issues of our time should have been so influenced by a professional philosopher whose working life has never taken her out of Oxford and Cambridge.

Mary Warnock has served as chairman of government committees on special education, on animal experimentation, on human fertilisation, and on teaching quality. Further, the recommendations of the committees she has chaired have usually been rapidly adopted by the government of the time and then translated into legislation with bipartisan support and considerable speed. The fate of her reports firmly refutes the commonly held view that governments set up committees to avoid making difficult decisions and then leave their weighty conclusions to sit on shelves, gathering dust until the topics in question have lost the interest of the public.