The Spectator Economic Innovative of the Year awards, sponsored by InvestTech, are open for entries.

If you are an entrepreneur-led business bringing radical change to its sector, please apply at www.

We are looking for entries all across the UK, and our closing date is the 4th of July.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor to The Spectator, and my guest this week is Wendy Kay Persig,

widow of the writer Robert Persig, who's the author of, at least according to

Wikipedia, the most bestselling book of philosophy of all time. And that is, of course, Zen and

the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and its follow-up Lila and Inquiry into Morals.

Wendy's produced or edited a new book called On Quality,

an inquiry into excellence, unpublished and selected writings. Wendy, welcome. Thank you.

Well, I must start with the obvious question. I know it's not such an easy one to answer,

but when he talked about quality, what was your late husband trying to get at?

That was the question of all his writing and the new book also. So I'm unlikely to be able to put it in one

sentence for you, or even a 30-minute interview. But that

doesn't really matter because anyone listening to this conversation doesn't need an author or

an editor such as I've been or anyone really to define it.

What I think my husband was, what I know my husband was trying to get at with the use of that word, is to get all of us to think about what and feel, what, how quality means to us, what it, how it operates in our lives.

And it doesn't really derive from anybody else's ideas. It's, it's inherent in all of us.

And both of his published books went on at length to explain why that's true.

He used it interchangeably many times with goodness

or excellence or positiveness. And he went on to explain how it crosses up with terms in Greek philosophy and in Buddhism for other terms.

But it's really something that we know.

...