Lord David Cecil

He knew how to dress and how to make a dry joke, and he was genuinely erudite, at least given the field.

He didn't entirely write the books he bylined, but his enthusiasm for David Cecil's The Young Melbourne was very real.

You're listening to the article Faking It from the September 14th issue of The New Yorker on your Niagara Frontier radio reading service.

In a work so dense with references, mistakes will sprout like crabgrass.