In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle revels in the world of quirky quotations courtesy of Gyles Brandreth
Here at Interesting Literature we love a good quotation. Much wit and wisdom have been condensed into a single line, or perhaps two pithy lines, and so a book of quotations is always a welcome addition to the creaking bookshelves here at IL Towers. The latest book to hit the shelves comes courtesy of a review copy of Gyles Brandreth’s Messing About in Quotes: A Little Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
And there’s something suitably Toadlike about Messing about in Quotes: dashing about from one subject to another, taking in animals and birds on one page and then apologies and excuses on the next, before we move on to cats and dogs, certainty and doubt, and so on through the alphabet, right through to sections treating words, work, writers, writing, and youth. (Zebras, I’m sorry to say, don’t get their own section, but then one wonders how many great zebra-themed quips there have been down the centuries.)
