вЂThe Arendt cult is a riddle,вЂ™ Walter Laqueur sighed in the 1990s, as Isaiah Berlin and Stuart Hampshire had sighed before him. The following year McCarthy and KГ¶hler were appointed joint executors after Arendt suffered a second heart attack and died in her Riverside Drive apartment.

McCarthy rushed over from Paris to help, then was joined from New York by Lotte KГ¶hler, ArendtвЂ™s longtime assistant. What on earth were those two doing in Scotland? Well, Arendt had been delivering the second part of the Gifford Lectures, which she would write up as her final, unfinished work, The Life of the Mind, when she had a heart attack walking to the podium. In Aberdeen in May 1974, Arendt had her picture taken along with her great friend Mary McCarthy less than a mile away from where I would have been sitting at that very moment in school. I too have merch with the dodgy quote on it вЂ“ a ceramic tile not a face mask, and вЂ™twas gift from my sister-in-law, working in league with my teenage son вЂ“ and I too have tweeted an image that links me to Hannah Arendt. вЂOne doesnвЂ™t always have to speak,вЂ™ Hill suggested вЂ“ a real Arendt quote, from the long television interview she did in the 1960s with GГјnter Gaus, and one of the many Hill keeps in rotation on her Twitter feed, along with вЂWriting is an integral part of the process of understandingвЂ™ and вЂSpeaking is also a form of actionвЂ™ and вЂEvil comes from a failure to think.вЂ™ She also posts pictures of the contents of ArendtвЂ™s library вЂ“ вЂall the old friends вЂ¦ Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Goethe, RilkeвЂ™, in the words of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, ArendtвЂ™s former student and first biographer вЂ“ as well as her manuscripts, typed then scribbled on and sometimes cut up and stuck back together: вЂOne can almost see вЂ¦ with enormous silver scissors and a roll of Scotch tape in her hand, making an image as much as a text, alive with desire for understanding,вЂ™ Hill writes in her new biography.

вЂI know! вЂ™Twas sweet gift,вЂ™ Stonebridge replied, then added: вЂWe should make our own.вЂ™ вЂNot a Hannah Arendt quote! :/вЂ™ Samantha Rose Hill, then the assistant director of the Hannah Arendt Centre at Bard College in New York State, tweeted back, across the hours and the Atlantic Ocean. I n summerвЂ‹ last year, Lyndsey Stonebridge, professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham, posted a selfie on Twitter modelling her new Hannah Arendt face mask:

Brutal doom hell on earth