Terry Pratchett - Snuff

And Vimes was gratified when he noticed at the ceremony that one of the Gordon daughters was wearing a spanking new nurse’s uniform, and three others were sporting some quite fabulous and also, to Sybil’s great glee, quite scandalous bonnets from the new Gordon Bonnets range.

There was an apology from the axe-wielding Hermione, who, according to her mother, was detained in the woods dealing with a very large and troublesome Pinus , which caused Vimes’s face to go blank until Sybil nudged him and pointed out that Pinus strobus was the official name for the white pine.

But most of all, later that year, Vimes was totally amazed to find that the bestselling novel taking the Ankh-Morpork literary world by storm was dedicated to Commander Samuel Vimes.

The title of the book was Pride and Extreme Prejudice .

Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. In all, he is the author of fifty bestselling books. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Worldwide sales of his books now stand at 70 million, and they have been translated into thirty-seven languages.

The exchange scheme with the Quirm gendarmerie was working very well: they were getting instruction on policing à la Vimes, while the food in the Pseudopolis Yard canteen had been improved out of all recognition by Captain Emile, even though he used far too much avec.

And thenceforth would be glad to get a gentle second place in almost every domestic decision. Lady Sybil took the view that her darling husband’s word was law for the City Watch while, in her own case, it was a polite suggestion to be graciously considered.

Apart, that is, from the line of artistically naked ladies along its parapets. They were holding urns; urns is art.

It was tricky; to Vimes all men were equal but, well, obviously a sergeant wasn’t as equal as a captain and a captain wasn’t as equal as a commander and as for Corporal Nobby Nobbs … well, nobody could be the equal of Corporal Nobby Nobbs.

Metal, in the circumstances, would not be appropriate … or safe.

Not to mention Blackboard Monitor Vimes, a figure of note in dwarfish society.

Willikins was an excellent butler and/or gentleman’s gentleman when the occasion required it, but in a long career he had also been an enthusiastic street fighter, and knew enough never to turn his back on anybody who could possibly have a weapon on them.

Later on Vimes pondered Willikins’ accurate grasp of the plural noun in the circumstances, but there you were; if someone hung around in houses with lots of books in them, some of it rubbed off just as, come to think of it, it had on Vimes.

More than once watchmen had found handwritten suicide notes which on careful examination weren’t in the right handwriting.

Saddle pork was invented some time around the Year of the Stoat by Reverend Joseph ‘Causality’ Robinson, rector of All Saints and Three Sinners in the parish of Lower Overhang. As far as can be determined from notes made by his contemporaries, the game may be considered an amalgam of spillikins, halma and brandy. No known rules exist, if, indeed, there ever really were any.

Sybil had explained to Vimes that in the country one dresses at least a decade earlier than in the city, hence the bustle, and, for Vimes, a pair of breeches: the ancient ones with trap doors front and rear and a slightly distressing smell all over.

See Dr Bentley Purchase, The Vicar is Coming to Tea and One Hundred and Twenty-seven Other Warnings of Social Embarrassment (Unseen University Press).

It was all a mystery to Vimes, who was absolutely sure that it was impossible to tell the difference between a chicken fart and a turkey fart, but there were those who professed to be able to do so, and he was glad that such people had chosen this outlet for their puzzling inclinations rather than, for example, fill their sink with human skulls, collected in the high street.

Because he wasn’t allowed much time talking.

The fourth Gumption to run the tobacco house and snuff mill felt that his surname lacked prestige, and for some reason chose the name ‘Bewilderforce’ — which did indeed become prestigious owing to the success of his tobacco enterprise, which was extremely well thought of by the gentry and others. And thereafter there was at least one Bewilderforce in every generation of the line (although girls were generally named Bewildred).

A glint is, in fact, a visual tinkle.

This is, of course, absolutely true.

The Colons had survived a long and happy marriage by having as little to do with each other as possible. This was achieved by the expedient of his working the night shift when she was working days, and vice versa. They had agreed this on the basis that anything else would have spoiled the romance.

Strictly speaking, the sexuality of any given dwarf remained a secret between him, or, as it might be, her, and his or, as it might be, her mother, until they decided to tell someone else about it, although generally you could work it out by observing dwarfs closely and spotting the ones who were drinking sherry or light white wine. Regrettably, this didn’t always work with dwarf policemen, because like all policemen everywhere they would drink anything strong enough to help them forget what they’d had to deal with that day.

According to dwarf lore the universe was written into being by Tak, who also wrote its lores. All writing is sacred to the dwarfs.

However that might be rendered in a language that at its best sounded like a man jumping up and down on a very large packet of crisps.

Regrettably, Constable Upshot was overly hopeful: in Ankh-Morpork the mice and the cockroaches had decided to forget their differences and gang up on the humans.

Which were, in fact, a permanency in any case.

Wee Mad Arthur was, as a Feegle, a very economical watchman to have, given that, size for size, he ate in a year what human watchmen ate in a week, although it had to be admitted he could drink, size for size, more alcohol in a week than any human watchman could drink in a year.

The first two being common theft and public indecency.

A race of freshwater mariners found everywhere in and around the Sto Plains. They are said to be incapable of lying, although this piece of information has been provided by the Zoons themselves, causing, as it were, a philosophical conundrum. Certainly it is maintained that they find the concept of a lie so difficult to understand that the few among them who have mastered the technique are venerated and given high office in Zoon society.