Laurence Sterne

In 1713, a child was born in Clonmel to a poor soldier who had fallen from the height of an archbishop's line. The family moved often and lost four of its seven children, yet the second son survived to become a priest, a humourist, and the inventor of Tristram Shandy. Starvation and displacement did not erase him; they sharpened the edge that later cut through stiff novels.