John Gardner at Home

Memories from David Garland

Dear John,

I was so dreadfully sorry to learn (from our mutual friend Niki Lacey) about your illness and I wanted just to send a note of solidarity and well-wishing.

It doesn’t seem so long since I was first introduced to you in Roger Hood’s rooms, and over the years I have so greatly enjoyed our occasional encounters in Oxford, here in New York, and once, I seem to recall, in the grand dining room of Gleneagles Hotel. It has always seemed to me that any conversation on any subject is the better – more clarifying, more intelligent, more amusing – for your being a part of it. And like everyone else, I have loved the brilliance of your philosophical writing and the good sense about the human condition that underpins it.

So I’ll be wishing you well John, and thinking of you.

Warmly,

David