Portal:Literature/Did you know/Week 44

... that Monarch of the Glen is a BBC television drama loosely based on novels by Compton Mackenzie, but also an 1851 painting by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (pictured)?

... that Amanda Craig's novels about contemporary British society are linked to each other by recurring characters?

... that, according to Gustav Mahler, tradition is "the preservation of the flame, not the adoration of the ashes" ("Tradition ist die Weitergabe des Feuers und nicht die Anbetung der Asche")?

... that John Steinbeck's 1947 novel The Wayward Bus revolves around a bus accident, and that it has no clear protagonist?

... that John Dryden, Colley Cibber, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Sir John Betjeman were all poets laureate?

... that The Truth Machine is a 1996 science fiction novel by James L. Halperin about a genius who invents an infallible lie detector, and that the book can be freely downloaded?

... that Enkidu, Humbaba and Siduri are characters from the Epic of Gilgamesh?