T hroughout history, the British have revelled in nonsense.
In 1846, Edward Lear published A Book of Nonsense, his readers’ imagination. Lewis Carroll wrote the most famous nonsense poem, Jabberwocky, in 1871.
Almost a century later, in 1948, Stefan Themerson founded an eccentric publishing firm, Gaberbocchus. He maintained this was the Latin rendering of Jabberwocky. He published the first English translation of the absurd play by Frenchman Alfred Jarry, which sadly appealed only to a tiny audience.
