Book review: Pharos and Pharillon

By E. M. Forster. Author of Howard's End and also, rather less well known like this book, of a history of and travel guide to Alexandria.

This is an elegant lightweight cultured tome, that I am not fit to review, so I won't, not really. While cultured it is not generally snooty, it is quite ready to share with you. There's probably just one exact word to describe this type of literature, but I don't know it.

Nowadays, this would be something dreadful; whilst not quite fair, an analogy that comes to mind is the book Bothy which E brought to St Gervais and I partly read, which has the modern tendency to giganticism that this slender tome lacks.

EMF is oddly enough most at home in literary lanes; and so the piece on cotton is inevitably disappointing. We get little more than his incomprehension, whereas it would be interesting to know more of the threads of the cotton trade; why is the share dealing end now nearly deserted; and so on.

But this is a book of essaies in the real sense and so contains as it should some failures. The last, on Cavafy, is nice.