Composer Dame Ethel Smyth took issue with those literary men who scattered well-worn quotations around their writings; it smacked, she said, of laziness, adding that musicians could hardly insert a few measures from the great composers whenever they were at a loss, if only because there was no convention equivalent to the inverted comma.

Dr Smyth gave examples of the various defences offered by those she dubbed the ‘quotationers’, but made it clear she was far from convinced. However superior another’s words might be, Smyth said, it was the writer’s duty to try to find his own; the challenge would stimulate his creativity, and raise the overall standard of his work.

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