How to Be: Lessons from the Early Greeks by Adam Nicolson review – ancient wisdom for today’s world

There was a wonderful, revelatory moment in Adam Nicolson’s last book, , where he suddenly telescoped out from the Scottish rock pool he was describing in order to meditate on the work of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, demonstrating how much we can still learn about our present-day world by turning to the great minds of the past. This dazzling passage of writing argued that engagement with the environment is always a philosophical act, and that the close looking of the naturalist is more similar than we might think, this chapter about Heraclitus showed Nicolson at his illuminating, energetic best – scholarly without being schoolbookish, aware of the role that brilliant minds, well harnessed, can play in enlarging and enriching our appreciation of life.