The World of Alphonse Allais

In one of his Independent pieces Miles Kington once referred to a volume of Edward Lear's limericks translated into French. Not an easy task, you might think, and in translating Alphonse Allais into English, Miles Kington set himself a similar challenge. He carried it off with panache. As Max Harrison said in The Times, '... has done a difficult job well, even preserving some of Allais's puns'.