For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor. Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Eliot and Gorey, Smart and now Gray consider the cat, and her relationship to those useful human... read more
Essays, some illustrations, and an alluring index: in 'B' alone you'll find Charles Babbage, Pauline Baynes, burial chamber (neolithic), blue colour, brightness, Louise Bourgeois, boredom, b... read more
In the C13th, the largest library in Europe contained fewer than 2000 books. Baghdad alone contained five libraries with between 200,000 and a million books.
The 40-year relationship between the prodigious writer and scholar (biographer of Gandhi, amongst other things, and a JS customer) and his original editor at Oxford University Press.
The Chinese-born novelist moved to Britain and then to the US. Her memoir glints with her fascination with the West as well as her nostalgia for the East.
A memoir by this most communicative classicist about her own experiences of suicide, and how she found consolation and understanding of herself and her family through close readings of clas... read more
The title could pass off as a short story by M.R. James or as one of the exploits of Robert Louis Stevenson's little-known, rather Ruritanian sleuth called Prince Florizel. It is in fact a d... read more