Karl Popper and Market Harborough

I don't suppose the great man ever came here, but I have found another of those connections which please me so much.

As I recorded recently, I have contributed the entry on Popper in the new Dictionary of Liberal Thought. Like many people, I first discovered his ideas through Bryan Magee's excellent short book in the Fontana Modern Masters series.

I knew from his Confessions of a Philosopher that Magee was evacuated to Market Harborough during the war. I now know - having bought his latest volume of memoirs Growing Up in a War - the he stayed with two families here. The first lived just around the corner from where I live now. The second lived just around the corner from where I lived as a schoolboy (and where my mother still lives).

He even mentions the little carpet warehouse across the road from my mother's house. In 1940 it was a factory making parachutes. And he used to buy sweets in the same corner shop as me.

A philosopher writes: It's a small world.

Thank you. There is a long profile of Magee here.