I tried I, Claudius and found it unreadably mannered and pretentious. I think perhaps I may have been unfair to it, but it was such a letdown after Goodbye To All That, which is a genuinely extraordinary work and beautifully written.

The prose of Goodbye To All That is poetic, clear and immediate in how it anchors us in a vivid impression of time and place. It is also frequently funny.

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>"Nor had I any illusions about Algernon Charles Swinburne, who often used to stop my perambulator when he met it on Nurses' Walk,at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and pat me on the head and kiss me; he was an inveterate pram-stopper and kisser. Nurses' Walk lay between The Pines, Putney (where he lived with Watts-Dunton) and the Rose and Crown public house, where he went for his daily pint of beer; Watts-Dunton allowed him tuppence for it and no more. I did not know Swinburne was a poet, but I knew he was a public menace."