Weird dedications are often the province of writers for children. Lemony Snicket (alias Daniel Handler) ran a series of dedications in the Series of Unfortunate Events books to an old sweetheart, Beatrice, “darling, dearest, dead”. You have to read all the books to discover who Beatrice was and why she meant so much to Snicket.

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Sometimes writers use their dedications to namedrop and aggrandise themselves. Nelson DeMille sent up this trend in his novel Wild Fire, dedicated to a long list of celebrities, everyone from the Emperor of Japan and the Queen of England to Paris Hilton.

George R. R. Martin, the man behind Game of Thrones, paid tribute to his friend Phyllis Eisenstein, who died of COVID in 2020, for her crucial contribution: “For Phyllis, who made me put the dragons in.”

P.G. Wodehouse came up with a nifty and much-imitated dedication for Heart of a Goof: “To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.”

Don’t always believe what you read though. Take the rampant ego of Twitter sensation Babe Walker in her bestselling book Psychos: A White Girl Problems Book: “Dedicated to the strongest person I know: Me.” Except that Babe Walker doesn’t exist. She’s the satirical creation of two brothers, David and Tanner Cohen.

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