In the January edition of New English Review, the good doctor tells his faithful readers of his aversion to spiders, the growing custom of keeping strange reptiles as pets, and witnessing an encounter between a spider and a moth.

I would like to wish our readers a Happy New Year and all the best for 2023.

As a social, or perhaps antisocial, phenomenon, the keeping of tarantulas is surely of some interest and even significance, especially if it is becoming an ever more popular pastime, as the number of commercial outlets for tarantulas (and reptiles) suggests. It bespeaks a society in which more people are leading isolated lives, in which they not only do they have no social life at home, but wish to have no social life at home, indeed want to protect themselves from the need or even the possibility of having one.