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Thank you very much to Greg Lennes for alerting me to this beautiful photographic blog by Peter Webscott about a visit to Montaigne’s tower. And of course thank you even more to the author/photographer – it’s a really wonderful post, which I wanted to share here.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT MY OWN POST! Follow the link above to view Peter’s Wordscene site properly – believe me, it’s worth the effort.
How to live? We all have to find our own answer to that question, but part of the enjoyment of the journey is looking at how others deal with it.
The sixteenth century French writer Michel de Montaigne is an interesting case. Withdrawing from public life to his estate near Bordeaux at the age of 38 he decided to dedicate to his life to trying to answer that question through a series of self-soundings which he published as the Essais. A lot of the early essais are quite dry and often repeat what his favourite classical writers had to say. Frequently that was contradictory. But when he starts to explore his own reactions to the world, gaining in self-confidence as he begins to trust his own views over those of the ancients, he becomes much more interesting
He lived in very turbulent times in France during the Wars of Religion, when…
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Sarah Bakewell 