much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet".Q is for Quotations. Johnson defined a second marriage as "a triumph of hope over experience" He never remarried.N is for Network. One of today's most fashionable buzzwords famously confounded Johnson when he attempted a definition: "Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the inter-sections."O is for Oats. Johnson scoffed at the fashionable breakfast cereal: "A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."P is for Pension.

As a lifelong Tory who detested the sinecures the Whig government paid to its supporters, Johnson defined "Pension" thus: "In England, it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his own country." This caused him some embarrassment in 1762 when George III provided him with a pension of £300 a year. It is hard to imagine many of today's literary lions suddenly deciding to roll down Greenwich Hill.K is for Kindness. Johnson wrote: "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."L is for London. One of Johnson's most famous quotes: "He who is tired of London is tired of life." Later, he was even more specific: "I think the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross."M is for Marriage (second).

He single-handedly wrote two magazines, The Idler and The Rambler, and virtually invented the political column. For all his dark fears, Johnson was extraordinarily brave, whether standing up to a noble thug or separating a pair of fighting mastiffs Perhaps his most endearing quality was his sense of fun. If he hadn't produced the first great dictionary of English, we would still be reading his Lives of the Poets. This scruffy, ungainly Black Countryman was a mass of personality oddities, which ranged from a fear of being alone to avoiding treading on pavement cracks Yet he was a giant of literature in a highly literary era. As three to 1,600, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."F is for Fanny Burney.