Douglas Adams

In the newest installment of its ongoing “Title Deed” series, the book section at The Telegraph focusses on The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy …. which title was first conceived back in 1971, says the paper’s Gary Dexter …

when the young Douglas Adams, lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck and nursing a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe, looked up at the stars and thought, ‘If there was a guide to the galaxy, I’d be off like a shot.’ That, at least, is what he said in numerous interviews. He later added that he had told the story so many times that he was uncertain whether it was true, since he could not be sure whether he was remembering the moment in the field or the act of telling the story about it – an awareness of the problematic nature of truth which is, of course, highly Adamsesque. One recalls a certain old man from the Guide who ‘repeatedly claimed that nothing was true, though he was later found to be lying.’