It's well worth dying, if one's obituary notice then appears in The Daily Telegraph. For Andrew M. Brown has, with flair and brilliance, carried on Hugh Massingberd's pioneering idea that what makes up a life and what's worth recording, aren't only distinguished deeds and public accolades, but absurdities, even calamity - certainly silliness and sadness. In these pages the reader finds dandies, divines, sages, lovers, travellers, villains, neglected geniuses - yet were they eccentrics? What's on display are men and women with original minds. If they died in a world where the maverick was no longer trusted or wanted, at least they were born in an era when unorthodoxy was prized, something to be nurtured not shunned. Which is to say this book, funny and loving as it evidently is, already has classic status and historical importance, because the society in which its subjects flourished has rapidly vanished. Roger Lewis, author, Seasonal Suicide Notes