Neil Gaiman: ‘Terry Pratchett isn’t jolly. He’s angry’
by Neil Gaiman
I want to tell you about my friend Terry Pratchett, and it’s not easy. I’m going to tell you something you may not know. Some people have encountered an affable man with a beard and a hat. They believe they have met Sir Terry Pratchett. They have not.
Science fiction conventions often give you someone to look after you, to make sure you get from place to place without getting lost. Some years ago I ran into someone who had once been Terry’s handler at a convention in Texas. His eyes misted over at the memory of getting Terry from his panel to the book-dealers’ room and back. “What a jolly old elf Sir Terry is,” he said. And I thought, No. No, he’s not.
Back in February 1991, Terry and I were on a book signing tour for Good Omens, a book we had written together. We were in San Francisco. We had just done a stock signing in a bookshop, signing the dozen or so copies they had ordered. Terry looked at the itinerary. Next stop was a radio station: we were due to have an hour-long interview on live radio. “From the address, it’s just down the street from here,” said Terry. “And we’ve got half an hour. Let’s walk it.”
This was a long time ago, in the days before GPS systems and mobile phones and taxi-summoning apps and suchlike useful things that would have told us in moments that no, it would not be a few blocks to the radio station. It would be several miles, all uphill and mostly through a park.
much more
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman
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I spent the last 2 hours happily, and productively, mining the internet for the Brewer Reference books cited by Gaiman.
Turns out, Internet archive has them!
I now "own" Brewer's :
Dictionary of Miracles (1884)
wherein I can look up such topics as....Diana of the Ephesians, Caiaphas's Counsel to the Sanhedrim, and the Politeness of Saints When Dead.
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which includes
The Rose Alley Abuscade ( of 1679 fame); Botley Assizes, what Bonnyclabber is, and why a parasite is called a toad-Eater.
The Historic Note-Book is equally fantastic filled with facts and explanations for various historic eras.
The author seems to have spent most his life collecting scads of information, details and fact which he then published, and I can see why people like Gaiman and Pratchett would find these works so very helpful.
Thanks, doc! 
