Christmas: without being grand and Proustian, this is a season when time present inevitably takes one back to time past. When we are very young, despite the grown-ups’ best efforts to promote moral uplift, Christmas means presents. I remember being given King Solomon’s Mines when I was nine or ten. No book has ever thrilled me with more sensual pleasure and I devoured all of Rider Haggard’s related oeuvre. The other day, I came across a shelf-load in a friend’s house. They did not work. The magic could not be reconjured. For me, the Haggards ride no more (though at least the Rudyards have not ceased from Kipling). But I hope that today’s boys will still follow Allan Quatermain and Umslopogaas, and be awed by She. It should be part of a gradus ad Parnassum.
When I was five, there was a Roman coin in my stocking. What a delight. That gift went on giving: the beginning of a lifelong flirtation with numismatics.
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