NogaNote:

On the wonderful quality of true friendship:

Martin Amis's reference to his friend Christopher Hitchens fits a theme I'm pursuing in my investigation into the nature and benefit of friendship. Inspired by Michel de Montaigne's great invocation and valediction of his own profound friendship with La Boétie, I've been trying to analyse this virtue, this moral "goods" as a foundational block in what we call "civil society". From what I've read about the Amis-Hitchens friendship by both of them, I have reason to believe that theirs is a friendship of such like rarity and endurence.

But what triggered this string of thought tonight was a project my seven year old daughter is working on, concerning a hippo, a tortoise and an unimaginable friendship.