He once picked up a destitute prostitute in the street and carried her on his back to his house where she stayed for some weeks to recover her health. He loved few things better than a tavern. ‘It is wonderful, Sir, what is to be found in London,’ he told Boswell, ‘the most literary conversation that I have ever enjoyed, was at the table of Jack Ellis, a money scrivener behind the Royal Exchange.’ ‘A great city,’ he believed, was ‘the school for studying life’. It was by studying life, as much as from his scholarly reading, that Johnson became the writer he did.

– Henry Oliver

Henry Oliver’s book is brilliant. Carrying it with me everywhere. Burning through pages.

The Samuel Johnson chapter inspires.

Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024.