Introduction

And is it true? It is not True.

And if it were it wouldn’t do,

For people such as me and you

Who pretty nearly all day long

Are doing something rather wrong.

Because if things were really so,

You would have perished long ago,

And I would not have lived to write

The noble lines that meet your sight,

Nor B.T.B. survived to draw

The nicest things you ever saw.

—Hilaire Belloc.