The Tortoise and the Hare Entry No. 1:
My Year Off by Robert McCrum Robert McCrum was forty-two when he suffered a debilitating stroke which left his left side totally paralysed, his speech impaired, and his sense of self radically altered. He was then editor-in-chief at Faber and Faber. I liked how he described his brush with death: “I have not lost my respect, of course, but I have lost my fear. I know what it feels like to be carried away, helpless, towards oblivion and finding by great fortune the current slow and swirl towards the bank, leaving me sprawled, quite helpless, on a new shore.” It reminds me of John Donne’s Death, Be Not Proud. Or that 1 Corinthians passage, “O death, where is thy sting?...