'The greatest men grow so long as they live.' There is a touch of bravado about this assertion. Rickword was in his middle twenties when he made it, and he may have thought differently before his death at the age of 84. Be that as it may, he would almost certainly have stood by the reflection with which he concluded his sentence: 'no one,' he said, 'has ever changed the fibres of his character.' Through all the ups and downs of fortune recounted in Charles Hobday's biography, the essential stuff of the man remains the same.

LRB 9 November 1989 | PDF Download