Wit and wisdom go together like … a gin and tonic? Whatever. They add fizz and flavour to the everyday, a chance to sit back, wind down and put things in perspective.

As an avid collector of volumes quoting the off-the-cuff, pithy, pertinent and cutting observations of our brightest and sharpest wits from Machiavelli to Voltaire; Mark Twain to HL Mencken; Elizabeth I to the Queen Mum and Maggie Thatcher; Churchill to Margot Asquith; Eve Arden to Joan Rivers and Bette Davis; Oscar Wilde to George Bernard Shaw and Dorothy Parker as well as being a lover of British, American and...