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World

Jolyon Maugham’s opening sentence might be the worst of all time

25 April 2023

4:11 PM

25 April 2023

4:11 PM

In the first sentence of his book, Jolyon Maugham – the anti-Brexit KC best known for clubbing a fox to death – achieves a mean feat. In 22 words, he conveys his trademark self-pity, self-aggrandisement and capacity for tying himself into pompous knots: ‘The life I have is hard, but I got to choose it, and the road that brought me here I did not,’ Maugham writes in Bringing Down Goliath.

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