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Michael Dummett's writings are a wonderful example of how philosophy is practiced through a thorough engagement with its history. He patently made his own distinctive contributions to the philosophies of language, logic and mathematics and to metaphysics; but much of his thinking was forged through his reading and interpretation of the work of historical figures: Wittgenstein, Russell and Husserl, but, above all, Frege.¹ Heroically he dubs analytical philosophy, post-Fregean philosophy, and claims that, with Frege, philosophy at last found its true method. What, in his view, is that method? Well, the traditional philosophical project, in Dummett's judgement is the analysis of thought and what we learn unequivocally from Frege is that the route to the analysis of thought is the analysis of language, a move which is often advertised as the linguistic turn.² This sketch immediately throws up two interrelated avenues of enquiry. The first takes us to a set of issues concerned with the attempt to pursue philosophy through the analysis of language; the second to a set of issues to do with Dummett's reading of Frege and, more generally, his reading of the history of the subject. By way of introducing the essays to come, I'll say a few words about each aspect.

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