ABSTRACT
Just as we started chapter 1 with an intertextual reference to E.M. Forster’s Howards End (did you spot it?), we now conclude this book with a quotation from another masterpiece of English literature, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones:
We are now, reader, arrived at the last stage of our long journey. As we have therefore travelled together through so many pages, let us behave to one another like fellow-travellers in a stage-coach, who have passed several days in the company of each other; and who, notwithstanding any bickerings or little animosities which may have occurred on the road, generally make all up at last, and mount, for the last time, into their vehicle with chearfulness and good-humour; since, after this one stage, it may possibly happen to us, as it commonly happens to them, never to meet more.
