Is it possible to start a grammatically-correct English sentence with the word "Than"?

Question:

• Is it possible to start a grammatically-correct English sentence with the word "Than"?
• If no, what other English words share this property?

Background:

• Trevor claimed that it is impossible. This is an attempt to verify or repudiate Trevor's claim.

Playing off WS2's comments, there's this excerpt from Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard, a 1930 novel by W. Somerset Maugham:

"Than Roy no one could show a more genuine cordiality to a fellow novelist whose name was on everybody’s lips, but no one could more genially turn a cold shoulder on him when idleness, failure or someone else’s success had cast a shade on his notoriety." (Source)

This is, at least to me, a stylistic choice to invert the natural order of the sentence. It actually flows quite well to my ears, and though I've never used the construction myself, it sounds quite natural.

So, based on this one example alone (and the others that can be formed from its example), I would hazard that the answer to your question is yes and that Trevor, by the answer's merits, is repudiated.

Bob's fat is so much more adorable than everybody else's, Mary said.

-Than everybody else's? You can't be serious.

'I'm very serious. Even more adorable than a- a- a-', halted Mary.

-'Than a what?'

'Than a blue whale on a trapeze.'

Justin Greer has already given an excellent answer, but it’s worth looking at why some examples of this seem more marked/forced, while others (like W2’s comment on the question) seem rather more plausible.

The most obvious way to get than at the start of a full declarative sentence is to use a “PP-fronting” construction, i.e. putting the prepositional phrase “than …” at the start, where you would normally expect to find the subject of the sentence.

So the key is to notice when and why English uses PP-fronting. It gets used mainly for topicalisation: that is, taking a phrase which would not normally the main topic of the sentence, and making it the topic. (See: the topic–comment model; and a couple of papers on PP-fronting.)

A sentence that fronts a “than…” phrase, then, is going to sound more natural if there is a clear reason for the phrase to get topicalised. One very strong natural reason is if it’s being contrasted with a parallel phrase in another sentence, where the rest of the sentence stays the same.

Beethoven is perhaps a greater composer than Mozart. Than Bach, though, he is certainly not greater!

Another way to get than to the front is to have the subject of the sentence a noun phrase which, by ellipsis, begins with than:

Running faster than a cat is easy. Than a dog, though, is more difficult.

Here the subject is the noun phrase “[running faster] than a dog”. So this example does rely crucially on its context, with the previous sentence supplying the ellipsis. It’s still a fully grammatical simple declarative sentence, though!

"Than" is a word that is normally difficult to start a grammatically correct sentence with.

Also:

Than a bear, the cub is smaller.