In this week’s BMJ column, Dalrymple discusses the essays of English writer Arnold Bennett:

…what he knocked off in an hour can still be read with pleasure and profit 80 or 90 years later. Bennett’s qualities as an essayist, apart from ease and elegance of style, were genial common sense and a complete lack of snobbery, intellectual or social, without ever losing a sense of ethical and aesthetic values (a difficult trick to pull off).

Read it here (purchase required)