Moore, like Socrates, is a philosopher whose influence rested largely on face-to-face encounters; but unlike Socrates he didnât have a Plato around to preserve him as a âgodâ for posterity. He provoked, challenged, asked searching questions and unrelentingly told the truth. Those are all crucial roles in intellectual life but not, it seems, roles that ensure you are remembered. Like the two hands he famously held up to see off the sceptics, he really had to be right thereâin front of youâin order to make a serious impression. Those of us who never saw him in action will never experience the âextravagant admirationâ he aroused at Cambridge in the early 20th century. And those among todayâs intellectuals whose most crucial contribution is to be interlocutors, provocateurs and testers of ideas, rather than the authors of great works, might likewise have to accept that it is their lot to live in the moment, rather than be immortalised in the history of ideas. Â
Frances Partridge, who was invariably described as âthe last surviving member of the Bloomsbury Groupâ until her death in 2004, once gave me a pointer about the gulf between the dazzling Moore in person and the faded Moore on paper. I sought out the 85 year old in the 1980s, when I was writing my life of Wittgensteinâshe had been close to Lettice Ramsey, wife of Frank Ramsey, a friend of Wittgensteinâs. When we met in her elegant flat in Bayswaterâwith Dora Carringtonâs famous portrait of Strachey on the wallâshe soon exhausted the memories that were relevant to my book. But I went back several times, because she was such a delight and seemed to be interested  in everything. One day the conversation got onto the Bloomsbury Groupâs veneration of GE Moore and I confessed that I had never understood why Moore was regarded as a great philosopher. In response, she leaned across the table, placed her hand gently on mine and said, âWell, you see, my dear, he sang so beautifully!â
