In the article I dismiss as absurd the idea that this picture proves what Steiner takes it as proving. It was originally published in Wittgenstein: Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten, edited by Michael Nedo and Michele Ranchetti, with the caption: Wittgenstein mit dem Freund Ben Richards in London.
The picture shows Wittgenstein walking down the street with a young man wearing a black raincoat. Printed with the article was a photograph which Professor George Steiner had, in conversation with me, treated as proof of Wittgenstein’s taste for ‘rough trade’. Bartley III, and that Bartley’s claims are possibly based on the misreading of a manuscript to which he was given surreptitious access. I chose to write about the controversy concerning Wittgenstein’s sexuality, putting forward an abridged version of the argument I develop in my book that there is no evidence for the promiscuous behaviour ascribed to Wittgenstein by the American scholar W.W. My brief was to write about an aspect of my research that would interest people who had no prior interest in philosophy and who knew nothing about Wittgenstein. They came in response to an article I wrote for the Independent. Still, I have been able to enjoy at least one aspect of celebrity status: I have begun to receive letters from people I have never met or heard of. No, they reply, they don’t read the literary sections, they just glance at the news headlines and the sports pages. The cumulative effect has been to provide me, momentarily, with the delightful illusion that I am famous, an illusion that is, however, cruelly shattered whenever I ask friends if they have seen the reviews. The impact on me has been that of saturation coverage, but that’s because I’ve bought every single paper or journal that has carried a review. This has been my happy situation for the last two weeks, during which time most quality newspapers have carried a review of my biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. After five years of beavering away in isolation and complete obscurity, it is tremendously exciting to pick up a nationally distributed newspaper or magazine and read a review of one’s own book.
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