FIGHTS, FEUDS AND HEARTFELT HATREDS Edited by Philip Kerr (Viking, $272) ANTHOLOGIES like this are a mixture of delight and dismay: delight because singular and unfamiliar anecdotes are chanced upon (I say ''chanced upon'' because this is an ideal bedside book) and dismay because it does not include some half-remembered scabrous attacks I have come across in the past but only the gist remains in the memory.
This book is organised, logically enough in chronological order, from Plutarch through to the present day. Included are nearly 80 anecdotes and essays.
The first duel recorded here took place at the end of the 13th century between a knight and a dog. A man had been murdered and buried under a tree. The man's dog searched the forest and tugged one of the man's friends to the tree and sure enough, the body was buried there.
Several times after that, the dog, normally docile, spotted the murderer and ''became like a raging tiger''.
King Philip the Fair ordered that the matter should be resolved by single combat. The murderer arrived armed with his lance. He made a thrust, but the dog, springing aside, seized him by the throat and threw him down. ''Thereupon the villain confessed his crime.'' Then there is the feud between the Marquess of Queensberry and Oscar Wilde over Queensberry's son, Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie).
When Queensberry threatened to disown his son and cut off all money supplies, Bosie's reply was a telegram which postal clerks must have enjoyed: ''WHAT A FUNNY LITTLE MAN YOU ARE''.
