Random

It's a bug we all have. We want to know details about the private lives of others, especially celebrities, or people we admire or look up to, or those we hate and wish ill for. Those details help solidify our ideas about them, whoever "they" are, and aid understanding and love, or ill feeling and anger.*

Last trimester, Nicola Lacey's book did just that for me. Hart was no longer just one another genius in a madding crowd who had formulated a brilliant and path-breaking way to understand the philosophy of law; he was human. And it was easier, having read Lacey, to forgive the flaws and holes in Hart's theory of law, because after all, he was as human as the rest of us, and had his failings and brilliance. Lacey draws extensively from Hart's diaries, and there is much that is endearing in Hart's frank and candid - and sometimes wistful and wishful, at other times angry and confused - version of his life, the ideas and the people populating it.

And the Obamas too: they're very human, if you know what I mean. It's a fairytale marriage (but not a fairytale living it), going by this article. I'm tempted, through sheer Cassandra-ness, to believe there must be red herrings. But I won't. No, I won't.

*Illustrative, not exhaustive. :)