Backwards and Forwards

As a wordsmith I have always been fascinated by quirky things about words. It was fun to compete with my school friends to find words which were spelled the same forwards and backwards. For example, civic, level, refer, solos. The real challenge was to find whole sentences which read the same forwards and backwards. In fact, I can only remember one:

The sentence ascribed to Napoleon when he was exiled:

“Able was I ere I saw Elba”

(Did he really speak English!?)

It was thus with some consider...