Still, the querulous druggist and his crew managed to win third place in their class.

FORBES: A billionaire is just another sailor

And then, a few querulous sessions later, I began to feel some pride, and not simply in my improved performance.

NEWYORKER: Hand on the Shoulder

And Mr Fox's propensity for careless talk, providing fodder to the newly querulous media starved of hard news, does not help.

ECONOMIST: Government in Mexico

They did this despite lavishing large dollops of extra money on the health service, which has kept normally querulous provincial premiers happy.

ECONOMIST: Canada

In that fractured, querulous, society religion and certain aspects of traditional culture (such as female purdah in the Pashtun areas) remain the great touchstones for generating fellow feeling or indeed outrage.

BBC: How Afghans will view Kandahar killing spree

Mr Blunkett did not go out of his way to quell this suggestion by saying cheerfully to a conference of querulous teachers last weekend that he was, alas, taking his leave of them.

ECONOMIST: Bagehot: And now that you haven’t voted... | The

Michael Portillo, though potentially formidable, returned to active politics after losing his seat in 1997 with the fire in his belly evidently extinguished, a fact confirmed by his strangely querulous bid for the leadership.

ECONOMIST: Bagehot