Edible dormice

One householder to be plagued by edible dormice [ FT408:4] was Peter Russell (1921-2003), one of last century’s most prolific and underrated poets. About 25 years ago, in his own periodical Marginalia, he described how a family of edible dormice living under the roof of his house in Tuscany had “torn to shreds” some of his papers (emt.it/riviste/marginalia/ Marginalia21.pdf). This closely parallels a passage in Juvenal, where opici mures (“tone-deaf rodents”) nibble the manuscript collection of a poor man called Cordus ( Satires 3.207).

Richard George

St Albans, Hertfordshire