Imprisonment

I remember little of my two years at boarding school, where I arrived aged eight, apart from the cloaks. Red, green, blue and yellow, for the houses of Ralegh, Nicholson, Gordon and Wellesley. They were called after generals, we were told, and of the four, Ralegh’s name is the best known. But why? I take a short survey of my colleagues. They all know the name but not why they know it. It is a curious fame to have, and perhaps David Gibbins’s book will do something to give it substance. Sir Walter Ralegh (Gibbins’s choice of spelling, as opposed to Raleigh, Rawleigh, Ralley and other versions in the elastic Elizabethan way with names) was more than a military commander.

In our godless, post-industrial, hyper-competitive world, rest is seen merely as recuperation: it’s when we man-machines ‘recharge our batteries’, as the cliché goes, before dashing back to the factory or work-station. It’s a negative concept. You rest for a reason, which is to avoid burnout. All you should really do to be happy is read light novels or self-help books, advises Montaigne But as this charming and subtle meditation on the subject from a grand French historian shows, rest used to be far more than just taking time off. It is a religious concept. Take the rest enjoyed by Adam and Eve in Milton’s Paradise Lost.