Lives of Houses edited by Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee (2020)

 This is a themed anthology which suffers from the usual disease - the effort of compiling such disparate material is a tokenistic one. It is meant as a revelation of what houses mean in human lives, and has a very particular bent toward writers. As such, it's a slightly middling affair. The writing itself being the core of these people's lives, any talk of their houses, however influential in glancing ways, feels like an outer layer of a secret we've already penetrated. Outer layers of course retain their interest, though it doesn't feel particularly essential: one's fascination briefly flares (in some cases) and then dies down without much permanent increment. To do the volume justice, a couple of discoveries have stayed with me: the fact that Lear's nonsense wasn't always brilliant, rather drab, is a reality-check - all tikky-wikky and witchy-wee; and that the Disraelis were seen as arrivistes; and the sad story of Yeats' tower, which is the only more lasting memory associated with the subject matter. Like most subject anthologies, this is just OK.