THE phrase ‘in the right place at the right time’ usually means exactly what it says, but it seems to me that its counterpart, ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’, often doesn’t, unless applied to someone whose double inefficiency has caused them to miss an appointment. An innocent bystander gunned down during a bank robbery was either in the wrong place at the right time, or in the right place at the wrong time.
This little pedantry came to mind when I looked up the career of Emeric Essex Vidal (1791-1861), a most interesting man who seems to
