Introduction

Everyone loves to succeed; no-one likes to fail. I daresay all of us have at least one experience of monumental failure from which we are sufficiently distanced to recount in a joking way, without loss of face. Yet the memory still haunts us. We joke about it but cringe inwardly. The memory remains crisp even after the emotion has faded. For some, the failure is so clearly etched in memory that it becomes enshrined in literature.