This month we shall be celebrating two exciting literary anniversaries – the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, who died on St George’s Day 1616 and was buried on 25 April at Stratford-upon-Avon, and the 50th anniversary of the death of Evelyn Waugh, who died on the lavatory on Easter Sunday 1966 and was buried at Combe Florey in Somerset on 15 April. As both honorary president of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition and general editor of a projected 42-volume scholarly edition of Waugh’s works, I find myself unavoidably moved by both events and shall be making a quiet pilgrimage to each of their graves during the course of this month.

Twenty-six million people have so far apparently paid to stand in veneration before Shakespeare’s hallowed tombstone at Stratford. No one knows why it is so small (just three and a half feet long), or why it was made from such shoddy stone, when the rest of his family were laid