In this marvellous book Raimond Gaita, the inspirational author of Romulus, My Fatherand A Common Humanity, tells stories about animals - dogs and cats, bees and butterflies. He interweaves these stories with reflections on how animals think, trust, hope and mourn. He argues that it is love which gives us the best model for the respect we owe to animals and the natural world.

Most radically he tries to show that the desperate search for personhood (as it's normally conceived by philosophers) in chimps or dolphins is partly the consequence of our failure to see how deep our relations - especially our moral relations- with domestic animals can be. Gaita argues that it is a mistake to think that our understanding of what we share with animals will be deepened by science.

Filled with wonderful stories about domestic and wild animals, about friendship and love, about the experience of mountaineering and the metaphysical contemplation of landscape, The Philosopher's Dog is a wonderful and moving work.

Fading and foxing.