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Bryan Edgar Magee (; 12 April 1930 – 26 July 2019) was a British philosopher, broadcaster, politician, and author, known for bringing philosophy to a popular audience.
Magee influenced popular culture with his efforts to make philosophy accessible to the layman, especially as a broadcaster on the BBC, interviewing a number of leading philosophers. In parallel, he was interested in politics and was elected as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for the Leyton parliament constituency in the February 1974 UK general election. He also wrote books, including The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, first published in 1983, and revised in 1997. His interests included the life, thought, and works of the composer Richard Wagner.
During his National Service, he served in the British Army, in the Intelligence Corps, seeking possible spies among the refugees crossing the border between Yugoslavia and Austria. After demobilisation, he won a scholarship to Keble College, Oxford, where he studied history as an undergraduate and then Philosophy, Politics and Economics in one year. His friends at Oxford included Robin Day, William Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Thorpe and Michael Heseltine. While at university, Magee was elected president of the Oxford Union. He later became an honorary fellow at Keble College.
At Oxford, Magee had mixed with poets as well as politicians and in 1951 published a volume of verse through the Reginald Caton. The publisher did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves – a similar deal had been struck with such writers as Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin for their first anthologies. The slim volume was dedicated to the memory of Richard Wagner, with a quote from Rilke's Duino Elegies: ... das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen ("... beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear").Magee, B. (1951), Crucifixion and Other Poems, London, Fortune Press Magee said later: "I'm rather ashamed of the poems now, although I have written poems since which I haven't published, which I secretly think are rather good. It has always been a dimension of what I do." Later he also wrote fiction, including a spy novel To Live in Danger in 1960 and then a long work Facing Death. The latter, initially composed in the 1960s but not published until 1977, was shortlisted for an award by The Yorkshire Post.
In 1955, he began a year studying philosophy at Yale University on a postgraduate fellowship. He had expected to hate America but found that he loved it. His deep admiration of the country's equality of opportunity was expressed in a swift series of books, Go West, Young Man (1958), The New Radicalism (1963) and The Democratic Revolution (1964). He taught philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford for a period but was not enamoured of the analytic philosophy then in vogue there.
He was eventually elected MP for Leyton at the February 1974 general election. In Making the Most of It, Magee wrote that he decided that the Commons was not suitable for him when he was sitting next to Renee Short, as she constantly interrupted a Conservative to call him a "twit".Magee (2018), p.404 He resolved not to spend much time on Parliamentary debates, and preferred to make use of the Commons library for his own research and to act efficiently on correspondence from his constituents.Magee (2018), pp.404-406 He sometimes went out to the theatre on an evening and returned to Parliament in time to vote, having missed the debate.Magee (2018), p.417
Magee was on the right of the Labour Party: he opposed nationalisation, nuclear disarmament and friendly relations with the Communist countries.Magee (2018), pp.299-300 He stated that he "detested" Harold Wilson as devoid of principle,Magee (2018), p.420 and criticised Callaghan for not understanding the role of negotiations with trade unions.Magee (2018), p.427 Early in Thatcher's career, Magee had friendly relations with her and the two discussed Karl Popper's philosophy,Magee (2018), pp.414-424 but he later described her as "limited, narrow, even blinkered".Magee (2018), p.432 As a member of the Labour Party's Manifesto Group, which advocated unity of all Labour MPs behind the election manifesto, he wrote the pamphlet What We Must Do.Magee (2018), pp.431-432
From 1981, Magee found himself out of tune with the Labour Party's direction under Michael Foot, and he decided to leave after he could not bring himself to oppose the Thatcher Government's agenda of curtailing the power of trade unions.Magee (2018), pp.433-437 On 22 January 1982, he resigned the Labour whip and in March joined the defection of Centrism Labour MPs to the newly founded Social Democratic Party. He lost his seat at the 1983 general election.
When asked what he felt he had achieved as an MP, Magee named his work to clear the name of his constituent, David Copper, for the murder of a postmaster, which he believes the police had framed him for.Magee, 2018, pp.444-447 He contributed to the 1980 book Wicked Beyond Belief, which was published three weeks before David Cooper was released from prison.Magee, 2018, p. 446
Magee returned to writing and broadcasting, which, indeed, he had continued during his parliamentary career and served on various boards and committees. He notably resigned as chairman of the Arts Council music panel in 1994 in protest at funding cuts.
He returned to scholarship at Oxford, first as a fellow at Wolfson, then at New College. He was from 1984 a senior research fellow in the History of Ideas at King's College London and, from 1994, a visiting professor. He found more time to write classical music reviews and worked on his own compositions. He admitted that, while his own work was "whistleable", it was "inherently sentimental".
Interviewed in 2003, Oxford contemporary Lord Rees-Mogg recalled, "we never knew which way Bryan would jump. And as his life later demonstrated, there was always a question of whether he was basically at heart an intellectual or someone interested in public life. So it wasn't a surprise that he went into public life, but the intellectual was really the predominant element in his personality, and the books seemed to represent the real Bryan more than the political activity did."
In 1978, Magee presented 15 dialogues with noted philosophers for BBC Television in a series called Men of Ideas. As The Daily Telegraph noted, this series "achieved the near-impossible feat of presenting to a mass audience recondite issues of philosophy without compromising intellectual integrity or losing ratings" and "attracted a steady one million viewers per show." Following an "Introduction to Philosophy", presented by Magee in discussion with Isaiah Berlin, Magee discussed topics like Marxist philosophy, the Frankfurt School, the ideas of Noam Chomsky, and modern Existentialism in subsequent episodes. During the broadcast run, edited shorter versions of the discussions were published weekly in The Listener magazine. Extensively revised versions of the dialogues within the Men of Ideas series (which featured Iris Murdoch) were originally published in a book of the same name that is now sold under the title of Talking Philosophy. DVDs of the series are sold to academic institutions with the title Contemporary Philosophy. Neither this series nor its 1987 'sequel' are available for purchase by home users but most of the episodes are freely available on YouTube.
Another BBC television series, The Great Philosophers, followed in 1987. In this series, Magee discussed the major historical figures of Western philosophy with fifteen contemporary philosophers. The series covered the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, among others, including a discussion with Peter Singer on the philosophy of Marx and Hegel, and ending with a discussion with John Searle on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Extensively revised versions of the dialogues were published in a book of the same name that was published that same year. The series was repeated on BBC Four in October and November 2025, and also made available on iPlayer. Magee's 1998 book The Story of Thought (also published as The Story of Philosophy) would also cover the history of Western philosophy.
Between the two series, Magee released the first edition of the work he regarded as closest to his "academic magnum opus": The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (first published in 1983, substantially revised and extended, 1997). This remains one of the most substantial and wide-ranging treatments of the thinker and assesses in-depth Schopenhauer's influence on Wittgenstein, Richard Wagner, and other creative writers. Magee also addresses Schopenhauer's thoughts on homosexuality and the influence of Buddhism on his thought.
Magee had a particular interest in the life, thought, and music of Richard Wagner and wrote two notable books on the composer and his world, Aspects of Wagner (1968; rev. 1988), and Wagner and Philosophy (2000). In Aspects of Wagner Magee "outlines the range and depth of Wagner's achievement, and shows how his sensational and erotic music expresses the repressed and highly charged contents of the psyche. He also examines Wagner's detailed stage directions, and the prose works in which he formulated his ideas, and sheds interesting new light on his anti-semitism." The revised edition includes a fresh chapter on "Wagner as Music".
In 2016, approaching his 86th birthday, Magee had his book Ultimate Questions published by Princeton University. Writing in The Independent, Julian Baggini said "Magee doesn't always match his clarity of expression with rigour of argument, sometimes ignoring his own principle that the feeling 'Yes, surely this must be right' is 'not a validation, not even a credential'. But this can be excused. Plato and Aristotle claimed that philosophy begins with wonder. Magee is proof that for some, the wonder never dies, it only deepens."
In 2018, Magee, then living in one room in a nursing home in Oxford, was interviewed by Jason Cowley of New Statesman and discussed his life and his 2016 book Ultimate Questions. Magee said that he believed he lacked originality and, until Ultimate Questions, had struggled to make an original contribution to philosophy, saying:
He went on to discuss his continuing interest in politics and current affairs and to describe the Brexit yes vote as a "historic mistake".
His memoir, Clouds of Glory: A Hoxton Childhood, won The Ackerley Prize in 2004.
The last of Magee's books to be published during his lifetime – Making the Most of It (2018) – closes:
A celebration of his life was held in the chapel of Keble College, Oxford, on 29 October 2019. The event was opened by Sir Jonathan Phillips, Warden of Keble College, and was introduced by Magee's executor, the academic, author, and editor Henry Hardy. It included audio and video clips of Magee, music chosen by him and played by the Amherst Sextet, and addresses by David Owen and Simon Callow. The music choices were the sextet from Strauss's Capriccio, the largo from Elgar's Serenade for Strings and the prelude to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The addresses by Owen and Callow were published together with a notice of Magee's life by Hardy in the Oldie.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Pensées by Bryan Magee". New Statesman. 28 July 2021 (a selection made from his notebooks)
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