Long years back, I was showing a teenage friend around the Lit and Phil, which is a private library in Newcastle and my favourite place on the planet; and I took her up into the gallery of old-and-rarely-borrowed-books, and flung my hand out at random saying "One of the lovely things about this place, you can fling your hand out at random and find something fascinating" - and pulled off the shelf Beards: an Omnium Gatherum by Reginald Reynolds. And was instantly fascinated, and took it home and read it avidly, and it became my Favourite Book: and it really is a social history of the beard, by one of those classic eccentric British scholars. It's delightful and informative both at once. And I thought I was the only person on the planet who had read it, but I was at a dinner party some while later and had barely begun holding forth about it before one of the other guests said "Oh, is that Beards: an Omnium Gatherum by Reginald Reynolds? It's in the Brasenose college library, and it went around my whole year like wildfire..."