Samuel Marchbanks, aka....

THE BOOK arrives in the morning post.

I ordered it a few days ago from a private seller associated with Amazon, and it cost me just 1p!

Of course, the postage cost £2.65 - but even so, I still think I got a bargain.

It's called The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks and it's a collection of short articles and pieces written by Canadian author Robertson Davies.

I've been a fan of Davies for many years and his novels are well represented on our shelves, as well as his witty and gently ghostly book of short stories, High Spirits.

Glancing through Samuel Marchbanks, though, I'm amused just by some of the titles of the pieces in the collection: Davies's wit and wisdom (sometime crotchety) span subjects as diverse as "Garbage and Our Culture" to "Religion without Tears", and encompassing "Female Beauty", "Improved False Teeth" and "Romantic Poverty".

He was of course writing before the advent of the personal computer - a device for which, I'm sure, he would have had no time - by my goodness me, what a blogger he would have made!