1. "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
2. "Marley was dead: to begin with."
3. "The scent, smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning."
4. "There were four of us."
5. "It was a queer, sultry summer, the year they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
6. "All this happened, more or less."
7. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
8. "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
9. "Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing."
10. "It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the Thames."
—from *Listellany: A Miscellany of Very British Top Tens, From Politics to Pop* (2014), by John Rentoul.
