A C Grayling
Great Minds Don’t Think Alike
Rousseau's Dog
By David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Faber 405pp £15.99 order from our bookshop
The Courtier and the Heretic
By Matthew Stewart
Yale 351pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
It should be acknowledged as a universal truth that if one person helps another, the latter will forever resent the former, because it is uncomfortable to be in moral debt. The only way to avoid this outcome is for help to be recompensed, either by a return of favours or – better far – by an undertaking from the helpee to find an opportunity to help someone else in future, thus passing onward the good deed.
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'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad