Be patient. This won't be short but worth it, I hope.

The other night I was at the launch of a friend's fourth book. He always co-writes his non-fiction works which, until this latest, have always had a strong narrative line that opens out from a moment of conflict between two people to examine their backgrounds and thinking. Thus: Wittgenstein's Poker, Bobby Fisher Goes to War and Rousseau's Dog. I would recommend them to everyone. The authors are David Edmonds and John Eidinow. David is my friend - a BBC journalist and a philosopher.

When he was writing the book about Rousseau he was at the same time making a radio programme about him and he went to interview a philosopher whom he judged to be one of the great experts: Nigel Warburton. While they were talking he told Nigel Warburton that he was in the process of writing a book about a quarrel between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. 'Oh,' said Warburton. 'But so am I.'

My friend was aghast. He had done a lot of work on the book already which had been commissioned by Faber. His expression must have been revealing. 'Will you wait ten minutes,' said Warburton, 'while I go and have a think?'

After ten minutes he returned and said, 'I won't write my book on Rousseau. I'll work on something else. And if you like I'll give you all my notes to date.'

I knew that this had happened but did not know the name of the man who had made this extraordinarily generous gesture - until the other night. Now to the book launch. I imagine that anyone with any interest in philosophy must by now know the website Philosophy Bites because it seems to have more visitors than most (would that I etc etc...) For a few years now David has been going round the country persuading philosophers to give him interviews on a single subject which he then edits into a fifteen minute podcast and puts online. The more philosophers he signs up, the more apparently wish to join the list - and who wouldn't. Now OUP have decided to bring out a book made of a selection of these podcasts. And the interviewer? Well, Nigel Warburton, of course.

At the launch, when I learned that he was the man who had turned over some years' work to a rival author I went to congratulate him on his generosity. To my mind, he compounded it. 'Well,' he said. 'They were further down the line than I was. Their book was probably going to be better than mine, so I thought....'

What I thought was that most people in that situation would have held onto their research all the more tightly. But when I told this story to another friend his reponse was quite different: this was not so much being generous as being smart (said friend is American). What Warburton was doing, he thought, was letting go of a project that maybe he wasn't enoying too much, putting it behind him and letting himself move on.

What do you think?