The ailments of the Lambs

doi:10.1136/bmj.c301

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Theodore Dalrymple, writer and retired doctor

In the days when children were taught to write essays they were given Charles Lamb to read. It was hoped, I suppose, that his Essays of Elia would impart, by a kind of literary osmosis, a grace, economy, and gentle irony to their prose. Some hope!

Lamb was an amiable man who spent most of his life as a clerk at the East India Company. Although he stuttered, he was a wit. When his office superior accused him of arriving late for work he replied that, to make up for it, he left early.

He lived all his life with his sister, Mary, with whom he wrote the famous Tales from Shakespeare. Their …