Friday's Notes

In Bettany Hughes,"Socrates – a man for our times," Guardian, 17 October, the author of The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life offers us a foretaste of her argument.

Daniel Mason,"Tormented by Proportion," Slate, 21 October, is a slide show that inquires into the sanity of the 18th century sculptor, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

Sheila Melvin,"China Remembers a Vast Crime," NYT, 21 October, features China's recollection of the destruction of Yuanmingyuan — the Garden of Perfect Brightness— on the western outskirts of Beijing by British and French troops in 1860.

Norma Clarke,"English houses and their inheritance," TLS, 20 October, reviews Bill Bryson's At Home: A short history of private life, Charlotte Moore's Hancox: A house and a family, and Robert Sackville-West's Inheritance: The story of Knole and the Sackvilles.

Michael Holroyd,"The Violet Trefusis affair," TLS, 20 October, is the Afterward of his A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate daughters – absent fathers.

Rick Perlstein,"That Seventies Show," Nation, 20 October, reviews a clutch of books on the 1970s in America.