[Professor] Tinker had written to...the London Times Literary Supplement, asking if anyone knew of any letters of Boswell in private custody. The Times of London is not only the best printed newspaper in the world, it is the only one in which anything whatever printed causes eventual ricochet. One issue, regardless of date, is as good as another; it is printed on paper too asbestic for good kindling, so it is rarely destroyed. And it is read, not in a hurry, by the kind of elderly dons, parsons, eccentrics, to whom reading is dram and drug. In this instance, reply was prompt and explicit: Professor Tinker got an anonymous communication: 'Try Malahide Castle.'"

Frederick Pottle's introduction to James Boswell's London Journal, which describes unearthing a bawdy private diary from 1762 that the Boswell family had kept hidden in a cabinet for hundreds of years, is nearly as delightful as the book itself.