“He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin vague beard–or rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat.”

This morning I had an interesting experience. I was due to speak on a panel for the BBC World Service about animal experimentation, especially on primates, along with four other people. The other panelists were from other parts of the world, including the UK, and so I needed to be at the studio by 8 am, which meant getting up before 6 am. At 7.15 the taxi came for me and drove me through thick traffic into Little Havana. I wasn’t much in the mood for it (though I’ve spoken on animal issues many times in the past). When I arrived at the studio I was greeted by Carlos and it quickly became apparent that this was set up as a music recording studio. I was confronted by a full set of drums, and Carlos was their owner. So we started talking about drumming, me being a drummer too, and before long we were having an animated discussion about music in the Sixties. I mentioned The Beatles’ This Boy as a memorable song, though not well known, and he didn’t know it (despite his extensive knowledge).  We agreed to listen to it when the interview was over. So I had that to look forward to. The discussion went on for an hour and a half, with the usual things said and disputed–blah-blah-blah. Then, when it was over, Carlos played This Boy through the studio speakers, paying particular attention to the middle eight, where John Lennon lets rip, ending with that piercing “cry-eye-eye”. We chatted a bit more, agreed to jam together, and then the taxi picked me up for the return home. I thought: Now that was a morning well spent. And maybe the animals will get something out of it too.

People seem to have some very funny ideas about how two of my books were published by OUP: The Meaning of Disgust and Basic Structures of Reality. After presenting the material of these books in seminars and discussing them with colleagues I sent the completed books to OUP. They then engaged anonymous reviewers, experts in the field, to evaluate the books, three for each book. In each case the reviews were positive and the books accepted. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the procedures employed; they were the same as with my other academic books. A couple of reviews of the books subsequently depicted them as complete rubbish, which is the right of book reviewers, but they went through the appropriate channels. I think it was the book reviewers who got it wrong, not OUP and its referees.