Shelley’s speechifying, lonely, Miltonic monster remains one of the greatest characters in all of literature… The book may also be the greatest meditation on birth I have ever read.

What he possessed above all, as a versifier, was a remarkable technical adroitness, a ready talent for witty ideas and a gift for ironical and understated phrasemaking. He wears extremely well

Generals tend to win their reputations at the cost of other men's lives. By an anomaly unique in military history Wavell's own reputation has reached its widest range - certainly in the English-speaking world - not because of his prowess as a soldier or a proconsul, but because of his identification with a small miscellany containing a selection of other men's verses