Lord Bonkers' Diary: I toss the volume aside

If I look back on this entry in years (or perhaps only months) to come, I shall have no idea what the old boy was on about.

Wednesday

I settle down with Rachel Reeves’s new book: 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Call me Ishmael. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. "Take my camel, dear,’ said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. "

I toss the volume aside. Reeves is just repeating Shakespeare’s trick of putting a lot of famous quotations together and hoping nobody notices.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• We have talked of little but Europe ever since
• "Beelzebub’s Brownies"