Know you not the good Dr J? No? You don’t know what fun you’re missing. What Dickens was to the Victorians, or Shakespeare to the Elizabethans, Johnson was to the Enlightenment. Only more so. He’s the only writer I can think of who was a classicist, defender of traditional Christian values, advocate for science, poet, and a postmodern. His most decided views expressed in clear vigorous English, brimming with wit and common sense.

His dictionary is one of the great achievements of the human spirit. It is the Sistine Chapel of literature, and, after the King James Bible, one of the most influential books ever written. Johnson through 10 years of arduous toil – through sickness and sorrow – sought to tame the English language by ‘fixing’ it. In both senses of the word. Permanent definitions fixed in place, and, because it was obviously badly broken, fixed with elegant definitions, that were purged of barbarous manglings and abbreviations.