Tales at Oxford’s high tables

SIR: I don’t at all mind reviewers disliking my books, but I do tend to think that they should read them carefully before passing public comment on them.

I mention just one issue in Nicola Shulman’s review of my book Being a Human (September issue) – an issue that is going to cause me personal and professional embarrassment. Shulman says that the Enlightenment section is centred on some high-table conversations at the Oxford college where I am a fellow.

Not so. On page 332, I write, of my college, that ‘the dysfunctional dinner with Professor Black could never have happened there’. On page 9, I say that ‘You will search the Oxford cloisters in vain’ for the protagonists of those conversations. I’d hoped that was clear enough. Professor Charles Foster, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford