I have had to break the news to my sister, Mary, that she shared a birthday (9 January) with Richard Nixon. So much for astrology. His wife, Patricia, bought him for his 48th birthday in 1961 a leather armchair and ‘an ottoman for his feet’. Not, one presumes, the Sick Man of Europe, comfy though that might have been. Just a plump pouffe.

The Bank of England Bedside Book, Volume I: Adventures, Escapades and Memories compiled by Paul Tempest (Stacey International, £16.95) is an oddity. Among some quite good contributions is one about Kenneth Grahame, who resigned from his senior job at the Bank just before The Wind in the Willows was published 100 years ago, on the grounds of fearing a mental breakdown. The timing looked a bit suspicious, but the poor man had suffered a nasty shock in 1903 ‘when a visitor to the Bank during working hours suddenly entered his room, pulled out a revolver and fired three shots’. Although unharmed, Grahame was ‘badly shaken’. The article suggests some plausible reasons why the Bank may have been ‘reticent’ about him after his resignation. It also suggests that Walter (later Lord) Cunliffe, a director appointed in 1895 ‘and widely feared for his bad temper’, may have been the model for Mr Toad — though other candidates have been mooted.

Why I call this book an oddity is that at the end there is a pompous section headed ‘Shrinkage, Access and the Mediatory Rôle’, written in the style of a headmaster’s buck-you-up speech on Prize Day. In a so-called ‘bedside book’, it sits very oddly with the more entertaining essays and poems. I cannot recommend the book, except as a curiosity, or for people who feel like reaching out a hand from under the duvet to read about ‘New cooperation with central banks elsewhere’ and ‘A rocky ride ahead’. The latter section begins with this festive stuff:

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