The Yale goes for alphabetical order by author, the Times for alphabetical order by subject, with authors arranged alphabetically within that. This takes longer to get used to, but enhances browsing pleasure, especially as the quotations seem to have been chosen with more flair, possibly by human beings instead of Google. Ten Muriel Sparks, with a decent range; 19 Wodehouses, one or two very fresh; and there is even room for nine Nixons and 14 Reagans. There are four John Osbornes, no Joans . . . and one Ozzy, which astoundingly comes under the category ‘Drink, Drugs and Debauchery’. (But which of the two has Kenneth Wolstenholme’s ‘They think it’s all over . . . it is now’? The Yale but not the Times.) What the Times lacks is any sort of index of what Yale calls ‘keywords’, so if you want to look up who said, ‘He hath eaten me out of house and home’, you can’t. This makes the Times almost useless as a basic dictionary of quotations, but the freshness and range of its entries do make it a highly entertaining read. It also has the benefit of topicality, for this is at heart a journalistic rather than an academic project. Buy it if you have more than enough quotation dictionaries already, and enjoy.

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