My Job Involves Searching For 'lost' Quotations

Euphemism In The Workplace Does Not End With Job Descriptions. It Reaches A Pusillanimous Peak At The Other End Of The Work Process - In Dismissal.

People Will Say What They Want To Say, In The Way They Want To.

My Toils In The Quotation Field Have Led Me To Formulate Two Or Three Laws About The Way People Use And Abuse Quotations. My First Law Is: When In Doubt, Ascribe All Quotations To Bernard Shaw - Which I Don't Mean To Be Taken Literally, But As A General Observation Of The Habit People Have Of Attaching Remarks To The Nearest Obvious Speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles And Alexander Woollcott Are Other Useful Figures Upon Whom To Father Remarks When You Don't Know Who Really Said Them.

I Am Only Too Aware That I Am Open To Rees's Second Law Of Quotation: "however Sure You Are That You Have Attributed A Quotation Correctly, An Earlier Source Will Be Pointed Out To You."

I Was Broadcast-struck From An Early Age; I Had Saved Up For A Tape Recorder And Started Making Programmes.