John Julius Norwich’s Christmas Cracker is an annual selection of quotes and clippings from his commonplace book. He prints it up as a thin, elegant booklet and distributes it to the counters of a few London bookshops (Daunts, Waterstones Piccadilly).
From the latest Cracker, here’s some ‘howlers’ found in school compositions. They made me laugh a little too loudly in public places, so be warned.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind from a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
