Thomas Anthony Birrell (1924-2011) was a man of many parts. For most of his working life he was Professor of English and American Literature in the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, where he was famous for his lively, humoristic and thought-provoking lectures. He was the author of some very popular surveys of English Literature in Dutch, but - first and foremost - he was a bibliographer and a historian. His scholarly oeuvre...