Stephen Fry
The national icon of intelligence's favourite line is from Anthony Burgess' Earthly Powers
I’ve chosen as a favourite line from literature, I won’t say my favourite because that should change every half hour at the very least, but a favourite at the moment. I’ve chosen the opening lines of Anthony Burgess’s novel Earthly Powers. It’s a fantastic opening line because it tells you four things about the hero and people say he was based on William Somerset Maugham but he needn’t be and you learn that he’s old, that he’s somehow a decadent and reprobate homosexual. That he’s rather exotic because he has an exotic servant and that he’s well connected and you learn all this in a sentence of blissful wit and fantastic energy and perfection that makes you want to read on. What more do you want from a first line?
‘It was the afternoon of my 81st birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.’
Isn’t that bliss?
