The Folio Society

In an ideal world, I would like to spend a couple of hours a day in a study panelled with dark wood, sitting in a bottle green leather reading chair, engrossed in a beautiful edition of a classic book while sipping fine red wine.

The only progress I have made towards it is buying the four editions each year that is the minimum obligation to maintain my membership of the Folio Society.

Well, it is that time of year again and for this round I will be buying;

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Shakespeare's Sonnets
The Assassins, Bernard Lewis
An Alphabet for Gourmets, M. F. K. Fisher

I was rather hoping that there would be a Folio version of Heroditus after Chris Howell's top ten brought it onto my radar, but c'est la vie.

This year the free book which I get for renewing my membership is Kenneth Clark's Leonardo Da Vinci, which certainly appears to be a handsome volume from the bumph that they have sent out. Did you know that Leonardo wrote "intellectual passion dries out sensuality" in his Notebooks? What a twit!