There’s a funny story in one of my earlier books – about eccentrics – concerning a Victorian chap who deleted all the words in his family Prayer Book such as ‘almighty’, ‘magnificent’ and ‘holy’ concerning God. His rationale was that ‘God is undoubtedly a gentleman, and a gentleman does not care to be praised to His face.’
In this more self-promoting age, we don’t have such a problem, and find his attitude funny. But it’s still easier if the praise has come out of the blue. Such was the comment of senior Tory MP Michael Gove in The Times this week:
… the book that will hold me absorbed, in anticipation and during the journeys is Benedict le Vay’s Britain from the Rails: A Window Gazer’s Guide, a quite superb, indeed incomparable, combination of maps, railway trivia, engineering insights and breathtaking landscape features to look out for. It also has, and I know this will be a prerequisite for many of you men out there, a quite superb gazetteer.
My excitement on coming across this book meant I felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken, or like stout Cortés, when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific.
Blimey. I’m overwhelmed. You can’t really ask for better comments than that. You know, I’m beginning to think the Tories aren’t so bad…
