This is a remarkable book and one that will prove deeply interesting, and even entertaining, to at least that (admittedly rather limited) body of persons who have an interest in the philosopher Plotinus and specifically in the history of the production of the definitive edition of his works by Paul Henry (1906–84) and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (1908–93) back in the middle of the last century – to be precise, Plotini Opera (editio maior), Vol. I in 1951, Vol. II in 1959 and Vol. III in 1973, with the editio minor (viz. the Oxford text) following in 1964, 1977 and 1982. It would seem to be the brainchild of Stern-Gillet, stimulated by her friend and mine, D. O'Brien, who had inherited the library and papers of the great Platonist and Plotinian scholar Arthur Hilary Armstrong, and was able, with the co-operation of Armstrong's son, Christopher (who contributes a most interesting memoir of his childhood in Malta during the War), to make available to her Armstrong's copious correspondence with the other chief figures in the book. She then roped in Corrigan (himself a student of Armstrong) and Baracat, who also make most useful contributions.

Now, how one might ask, could this be a topic of much interest or entertainment? Well, that is a consequence of the strategies of the editors. What we have is, following an initial chapter on ‘The Text of Plotinus from Ficino to Henry and Schwyzer’, giving a useful overview of previous editions, a series of chapters comprising background materials on each of the chief figures concerned, Henry (Chapter 2), Schwyzer (Chapter 3) and Armstrong (Chapter 4), who interacted very significantly with both the previous figures, while producing the seven volumes of his superb Loeb edition of Plotinus, followed by other, somewhat shorter, chapters, on more peripheral, yet still significant, figures such as Jean Trouillard (Chapter 5) and the Spanish Jesuit scholar Jésus Igal (Chapter 6), with a final chapter pulling together information on such figures as Emile Bréhier, Willy Theiler, B.S. Page (who helped Stephen MacKenna to complete his great translation) and Evanghelos Roussos (who forms a sort of link between Schwyzer and Paul Kalligas, author of the fine translation of Plotinus, with commentary, into Modern Greek).

What warms the heart, and makes the book eminently readable, are the personal touches revealed in the extensive correspondence, particularly between Henry and Armstrong, Schwyzer and Armstrong, and Armstrong with his former student Corrigan, and with Igal, which helps to bring all the characters concerned to life and reveals the stresses and strains attendant on completing such a vast project.

Henry comes across as somewhat more lively than Schwyzer, the latter being rather more schoolmasterly in demeanour. There are interesting manoeuvrings reported around the plans for the famous Fondation Hardt colloquium on Plotinus that took place in 1957, which make for entertaining reading, as well as the records of his visits to Liverpool and to Oxford in the autumn of 1955. Also most valuable are records of Henry's handouts for a series of lectures that he was invited to give in South America back in the 1960s, preserved by Prof. Maria Santa Cruz, who attended them as a student. I find particularly valuable his insistence on the personal nature of the One and his discussion of the nature of Plotinus’ mysticism.

Schwyzer's letters to Armstrong are generally fairly closely confined to problems of the text, but there are some nice touches, as this one, from a letter of 17 October 1969:

For many years Henry journeyed to Zurich every summer for a number of months to work with Schwyzer on Plotinus, and they sat at his desk, across from each other, worrying away at the rebarbative text of their hero. He spent virtually his whole career as a teacher of Classics in the Kantonsschule in Zurich and never wished for more. The edition of Plotinus was, it seems, the avocation that gave his life meaning. This comes through forcefully in the letters.

Arthur Hilary Armstrong (1909–97), the recipient of most of the letters of Henry and Schwyzer presented here, and author of many of his own, chiefly to his favoured pupil Corrigan (from his period teaching in Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, which extended from 1970 to 1982), but also two to Greg Shaw about theurgy, is the next Plotinian to be celebrated in this volume, both for his help with the Henry–Schwyzer edition and for his superb seven-volume Loeb edition, which overlapped with the former. Once again, we are treated to many personal details, which serve to bring the great man alive.

Of Jean Trouillard (1907–84) we have, first, a fine memoir from G. Shaw, who had the pleasure of studying with him in Paris in 1982–3, not long before his death, and then a selection of letters to Armstrong and to Shaw, with interesting remarks on aspects of Plotinus’ doctrine and on theurgy.

Next, and last of the main figures to be celebrated, is Jésus Igal (1920–86), the Spanish Jesuit scholar, author of the definitive Spanish translation of the Enneads. His letters to Armstrong, though containing personal elements, are mainly concerned with a host of conjectures on the text of the Enneads, versions of which have also been sent to Schwyzer (though we have no record of that – except, of course, the consequent acknowledgements in the H–S apparatus criticus!). He is revealed in these as a brilliant textual critic, as well as a charmingly modest man.

A fine example of Igal's intensive work on the text of the Enneads is his note on VI 5, 8.28–33, appended to his letter to Armstrong of 18 June 1977, a difficult and corrupt passage concerning the Form's mode of ‘informing’ Matter, where his proposals were largely accepted by H–S and Armstrong (and, I am glad to observe, adopted by Emilsson in his and Steven Strange's edition of VI 4–5 for the Parmenides Press series). Similarly, I am glad to observe that I was able to adopt, in our Parmenides Press edition of IV 3–4, ‘a timid suggestion’ of his, propounded in a letter of 8 March 1978, to the solution of a troubled passage at IV 4, 1.36–8, which Armstrong ad loc. regards as ‘attractive, but not completely convincing’.

The final chapter gathers together some tributes to, and records of, four rather more peripheral, but still most interesting, figures, Emile Bréhier (1876–1952), to whom a fine tribute is paid by L. Brisson; then a similar tribute to Willy Theiler (1899–1977), of the Harder–Beutler–Theiler edition, by G. O'Daly; then a short appreciation of B.S. (‘Tony’) Page (1904–93), by M. Atkinson, who studied with him in Cambridge in his retirement, along with a letter from Page to E.R. Dodds about the H–S edition, with a series of suggested emendations; and lastly an extensive review of the H–S Editio Maior by Evanghelos Roussos (1931–2016), a friend of Paul Kalligas.

All in all, a fascinating treasure-trove of material relative to this great edition and its authors, very well edited by Stern-Gillet, with much technical help, it seems, from Baracat. The volume is completed by a most useful index locorum and an index nominum.