The ensuing debate worried away at the ethics of financially incentivising something so sacredly natural and freely given.
Athens, Persia, Sparta, Macedon, and Rome all worried away at it long before the Ottomans took possession, and it was only to be expected, at the onset of the First World War, that the Allied forces — mainly British and French — would seek to prize Gallipoli from the Ottoman grasp.
Another character, a once idealistic Russian agent, spends most of the book working as an undercover cut-out in Washington: Mr Le Carré, particularly in his current incarnation, would have worried away at such a figure, tempting him to change sides.
Earlier in the series Vanska revealed the mechanics of Sibelius's creative process: how he worried away at a work until it achieved precisely the form he wanted, by recording the first, chamber-music version of the tone poem En Saga and the original four-movement form of the Fifth Symphony, a work that we now know in three movements.
If anyone knows well enough to answer, they do, and, in the process, they will be honoring the example of many distinguished philosophers who have worried away at the fine cracks that open up between concepts such as hoping, wishing, promising, ordering, and intending.
According to former spin doctor Damian McBride's entertaining memoir Power Trip, paymaster general Dawn Primarolo worried away at the issue, fighting with customs officials who argued that offering VAT relief on a product used by only one sex was, itself, sexist.
