"The Assassin's Cloak gathers brief and often wonderful entries by poets and philosophers, businessmen and barons for each day of the year....This book is for the expert and the dilettante, for the coffee table and the reference shalf."

ALAN TAYLOR is an associate editor of the Sunday Herald. He was a board member of the Edinburgh International Book Festival and, in 1994, a judge of the Booker Prize. IRENE TAYLOR is a trained librarian and works for the National Trust in Scotland.