Johnny Lyons
Website →Biography
Johnny Lyons is editor of the Dublin Review of Books. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin and the University of Cambridge, he is the author of The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin (Bloomsbury, 2020), Isaiah Berlin and his Philosophical Contemporaries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and editor of Understanding Humanity with Isaiah Berlin (Cambridge University Press, 2026).
Articles by Johnny Lyons
2025
2023
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Ideas
Up Mount Improbable
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Ideas
Problems, problems
One of the main reasons why both philosophy and literature have a much more significant relationship with their heritage than subjects like physics or maths…
2022
2019
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World Literature
Is Larkin good for you?
A defining characteristic of art, as Martin Amis wrote, is its inability to lower our spirits, even if its message is irredeemably gloomy. The genius…
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World Literature
The hegemony of history
Quentin Skinner’s most significant contribution to the history of ideas was his insistence that canonical texts do not stand outside history proposing universal and ‘ageless’…
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World Literature
Philosopher in a Hurry
As a popular explainer of what philosophy is concerned with, Bryan Magee had few equals. Never, perhaps, has so much been owed by so many…
2018
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World History
The Genius and the Pedant
Isaiah Berlin had not only a great gift for political philosophy but an unusual talent for verbal expression: his wartime diplomatic despatches from the US…
Blog Posts by Johnny Lyons
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Is it time?
November 2, 2020 -
Liberalism Under Threat
November 2, 2020