Monday 11 September 2023

Long Books

Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003), Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson, ed. by Richard Davenport-Hines (London: Phoenix, 2007), p. 65 [4 May 1951]:

I, unlike you, prefer my books to be long (though this may be a sign of laziness: it spares one the mental effort of repeated choice); and I am now re-reading, for the nth time, that greatest of all historians, as I continually find myself declaring, - Gibbon. What a splendid writer he is! If only historians could write like him now! How has the art of footnotes altogether perished and the gift of irony disappeared!

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, ed. by Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, 1982), p. ix:

 ‘You can’t get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me [...]’