The gentle reader is no doubt familiar with the genre of mind game wherein a wholly hypothetical situation, such as being marooned on a desert island, is combined with a highly specific dilemma, such as which book or recording one would take there if one could. The field of speculation is almost limitless.

“Homage to Catatonia” was, at least apocryphally, the title that clinched the commission of an article about pub crawling from the editor-in-chief of a middlebrow newspaper, whereupon the journalist went off to sample his usual boozers right up to the evening of publication. Seeing the article up on the screen, however, the night editor scratched his pate, remembered that George Orwell’s title was “Homage to Catalonia,” and corrected the typo in the headline. Thankfully, we don’t have a night editor.