" I’ve always found it strange that so many of them meet their Maker in unusual circumstances. Matthew Arnold, for example, died while leaping over a hedge . . .’ ‘I suppose he did,’ Sidney replied. ‘And didn’t the Chinese poet Li Po drown while trying to kiss the reflection of the moon in water?’ ‘Pushkin and Lermontov were both killed in duels . . .’ Sidney began to recall his classical education, ‘Aeschylus was felled by a falling tortoise.’ ‘Euripides was mauled by a pack of wild dogs . . .’ ‘Neither of them strictly poets, of course . . .’ Sidney cautioned. ‘Although if the criteria was broadened to writers in general then we could have a field day,’ Leonard Graham continued. ‘Edgar Allan Poe was found in another person’s clothes.’ ‘And Sherwood Anderson swallowed a toothpick. But we are getting distracted, my good friend. "
― James Runcie , Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries #1)