In their unfashionable view that it is possible, as Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman put it, to 'use [the] language of morals and speak of objective moral truth', and their conviction that human beings are 'social, creative, curious, spiritual' creatures rather than mere 'efficient calculating machines', the four heroines of this book were untimely. I wish I had read this text before my travels so I'd had a better idea of the different colleges and noteworthy sights! Neither the great Enlightenment thinkers of the past, the logical innovators of the early twentieth century, or the new Existentialist philosophy trickling across the Channel, could make sense of this new human reality of limitless depravity and destructive power, the women felt.

I would have enjoyed a deeper dive into their philosophical works and their intellectual sparring with their contemporaries who pursued other philosophical lines of thought, but I guess I just have to read further about them to get into that aspect of their work. I recently read Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein but this book throws a light on Wittgenstein’s intellectual relationship with the four women that is unknown to most of the public including most philosophers. how women fought their way on to the world stage of philosophy and turned its spotlight away from an analytical desert on to what was really important - moral clarity, wisdom and truth. Elizabeth Anscombe: defiantly brilliant, chain-smoking, trouser-wearing Catholic and (eventual) mother of seven. Badminton’s principal, Miss Beatrice May Baker (alias BMB), was a progressive woman with an international outlook – pupils between the wars were told: ‘You must not expect jam for tea while German children are starving’.Though Mary was by far the taller, when people saw her and Iris together, crossing the Somerville College lawn, it was Iris they remembered – her ‘corn-hair’ and confidence caught the eye. Elizabeth Anscombe: defiantly brilliant, chain-smoking, trouser-wearing Catholic and (eventual) mother of seven. I hated the references to Ayer as Freddie, but almost threw the book against the wall when they referred to Kant as Immanuel. Iris had a sunny room in East, Somerville’s new front quadrangle, while Mary’s was dark and at the other end of the oldest building, West. It is extremely readable even when dealing with difficult and (to the outsider) dry aspects of philosophy - Wittgenstein on rule-following can be very tough in the wrong hands - and JL Austin and Gilbert Ryle don't generate too many laughs.

A circle that endured for years, sometimes separated and fragmented, but always a fertile source for ideas and a form of support.The other is Philippa foot, writing a very long letter, pleading that Somerville offer Elizabeth a job. It fell to four women philosophers, each born in the years between 1918 and 1920, to object to this sad state of affairs.