There have been quite a few anthologies of British eccentricity. Usually they are roll-calls of the lunatic: a sought-after heiress so snobbish she finally gave her hand in marriage to a man who had managed to convince her he was the Emperor of China; a miser so mean he would sit on fish until he considered them cooked; a man so addicted to cobnuts he would, after any long coach journey, be up to his knees in their shells. Men who refused to get into a bath, others who refused to get out of one, or were so quarrelsome they could spot an insult at 100 yards, others who so loved animals they would bath owls (which died), or founded their own religions so they could copulate with the faithful on the high altar (though I gather this was an ambition of the novelist Graham Greene). All the crackpots. So it is a pity that this book has as its subtitle ‘A Gallery of Glorious British Eccentrics.’

For David McKie avoids the certifiable: his eccentrics are just like the rest of us, except, like Flecker’s pilgrims, they would go always a little further. Take Sir Thomas Phillipps, a man who so loved books he filled his house with them. Nothing odd about that. I have just stayed with a friend in Cardiff who, having run out of shelves, now stacks them in his passageway and has turned the key on bedrooms full of tea-chests. But Phillipps’ house was bigger (at one point he contemplated buying a castle and roofing its courtyard to accommodate his collection), so he could entertain the ambition of owning a copy of every book in the world. In the process, amongst the canyons, he mislaid his family and any interest in the actual upkeep of a property that had become a cupboard. Windows were never opened, though that made little difference, for no pane of glass was left in any of them.

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