SOURCE: Fox, Lorna Scott. “A Fine Time Together.” London Review of Books 22, no. 14 (20 July 2000): 37-9.

In the following review, Fox provides information on the history of bullfighting and offers a critique of On Bullfighting, arguing that Kennedy's recollections of her personal and emotional turmoils detract from the work.

Most people who are obsessive animal-lovers as children grow out of it. I didn't. I still feel a helpless identification with most of them, and the scene in Apocalypse Now in which scurrying specks are bombed from helicopters simply made it harder for me to step on ants. So I find it difficult to justify my liking for the bullfight. My excuse—which, I should say, has never convinced anyone—is that of all our dealings with animals, bullfighting at its best seems the most dignified. I was nine when I read the memoirs of the great Peruvian fighter Conchita...