One night – it was 2.30am – he dressed down a graduate, screaming in her face: “Are you stupid? Are you a fucking stupid cunt?” I had never seen anything like it in a workplace, or on TV, and I haven’t since.

Laureans were as crazy for baths as they were for bardics.

Hannan turned from the piano and said, winking at the others: Mac thinks a Marxian is somebody who went to St Mark's school.

The zombie scenes are reminiscent of what you might see on a show like The Walking Dead, short bursts of extreme violence and gore punctuating expository dialogue scenes where the survivors try to figure out how they’re going to get from point A to point B.