One of the Dozen Best

 In Brief Encounters: Notes from a Philosopher's Diary, Anthony Kenny writes of Peter Geach as "one of the dozen best British philosophers of the twentieth century." This may be so, but it made me wonder whether I could name a dozen British philosophers of the twentieth century, of any quality. Counting only those who wrote their major works in the last century, and leaving out edge cases--if we count Wittgenstein as British, must we then count Whitehead as American?--I just about could, though I hadn't necessarily read their works. I came up with

1. G.E.M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe (two books)
2. J.L. Austin (two books)
3. A.J. Ayer (one book)
4. Philippa Foot (two books)
5. Peter Geach (no books, though much of a volume of Frege he helped to edit)
6. Stuart Hampshire (two books)
7. R.M. Hare (no books)
8. Anthony Kenny (philosophically, just the judgments in Brief Encounters)
   
9. Alasdair MacIntyre (one book)
   
10. Mary Midgley (one book)
11. Iris Murdoch (one book of philosophy)
    
12. Bertrand Russell (some of Essays in Analysis)
13. Gilbert Ryle (one book) 
    
14. R.L. Strawson (some of a collection of essays he edited)

I did not pay that much attention to British philosophy when I was younger, but now I can't come close to that number for any other combination of country and century.