Book Review: Jonathan Miller – One Thing and Another: Selected Writings 1954-2016 edited by Ian Greaves, Oberon Books, 2017

‘In the end “one thing and another” is all I’ve ever been interested in’, writes Jonathan Miller in the foreword to this fascinating new collection of his various writings, spanning seven decades. Miller is a little dismissive in the foreword, describing the various pieces collected here as ‘an assortment of life-long obsessions and passing fancies’; the product of a magpie mind. But whether Miller recognises it or not, ‘one thing and another’ is quite an appropriate phrase for encapsulating a key theme that emerges from this book - Miller’s constant movement between two different orders of discourse and his frequent efforts to use ‘one thing’ in order to try to understand ‘another’.