Pussy Galore ... can scarcely be taken for standing for 'the eternal feminine'

In every  story it is, of course, a different woman, each given a flip, thowaway, double-entendre-type name such as Pussy Galore, Honeychile Rider, Tiffany Case. Such disposable images of womanhood, viewed only as fantasy objects of male erotic desire, can scarcely be taken for standing for 'the eternal feminine'. We may also then note that there is no sign of Bond having attained rule over any kind of a 'kingdom'.

C. Brooker, The seven basic plots (2004), 380-1

The whole of the last two thirds of the book is full of guff like this. Should you read it, I suggest you stop at page 230.

To be fair, Joseph isn't stupid; he's barmy.

The Government seems to be in mess. The country is full of intelligent Jews. Why, therefore, must Mrs Thatcher employ three really stupid ones in Lawson, Britton and Joseph? To be fair,  Joseph isn't stupid; he's barmy.

[15th January 1986]

R. Mortimer & C. Mortimer, Dear Lupin: letters to a wayward son (2012), 167

Constantinople is the great capital, the city, the attraction and the hope of all the Hellenes

In 1844, the Prime Minister Collettis in a speech to the constituent assembly revealed the place of Constantinople in Greek hearts and minds: 'There are two great centres of Hellenism, Athens and Constantinople. Athens is only the capital of the kingdom; Constantinople is the great capital, the city, the attraction and the hope of all the Hellenes.' Pictures of the Oecuminical Patriarch hung on   Greek walls beside the king and Queen of the Hellenes - and Aya Sofya, without minarets.


P. Mansel, Constantinople: city of the world's desire (1995), 280

Europeans who regarded a country as a career rather than a cause

Like the Mavrocordato, the Testa refused to be imprisoned in one nationality. They were an extreme example of a once common phenomenon: Europeans who regarded a country as a career rather than a cause. Hereditary diplomats, they worked in Constantinople  because it was a centre of diplomacy as, in the eighteenth century, foreigners worked in Paris because it was a centre of fashion (intellectual, artistic and vestimentary). The Testa's primary loyalties were to the city [Constantinople], the Catholic religion, and whichever power they were serving at the time.

P. Mansel, Constantinople: city of the world's desire (1995), 211

The insane Socrates of the National Assembly

The sweeping away of the existing order had left people biddable and lacking in direction, he said, and easy prey for imposters posing as idealists. Young people in particular had been deeply corrupted by revolutionary ideas. They had fallen under the malign influence of Rousseau, 'the insane Socrates of the National Assembly', a philosopher whose person and thought were dedicated to an 'ethics of vanity', which exalted the self and ignored values of honour, duty, humility and personal virtue

J. Norman, Edmund Burke (2013), 145

England was the country that God had got to first, properly

Poor, poor Treece, thought Emma; for she loved to sympathise, Poor man, he has tried to show us all that foreigners aren't funny; but they are. After all, there was one thing that every Englishman knew from his very soul, and that was that, for all experiences and all manners, in England lay the norm; England was the country that God had got to first, properly, and here life was taken to the point of purity, to the Platonic source, so that all ways elsewhere were underdeveloped, or impure, or overripe. Everyone in England knew this, and an occasion like the present one was not likely to prove that things had altered.

M. Bradbury, Eating people is wrong (1959), 43

You could see he was an Englishman first and a Christian second

Arthur Box-Bender was seeking to make himself agreeable to the domestic prelate '... not a member of your persuasion myself but I'm bound to say your Cardinal Hinsley did a wonderful job of work on the wireless. You could see he was an Englishman first and a Christian second; that is more than you can say of one or two of our bishops.' 

E. Waugh, Unconditional Surrender (1961), in collected edition, Sword of Honour (1984), 435

Tactics as interpreted by Brigadier Ritche-Hook consisted of the art of biffing

Tactics as interpreted by Brigadier Ritche-Hook consisted of the art of biffing. Defence was studied cursorily and only as the period of reorganization between two bloody assaults. The Withdrawal was never mentioned. The Attack and the Element of Surprise were all.  

E. Waugh, Men at Arms (1952), in collected edition, Sword of Honour (1984), 110-1

For nothing much, he assumed, could reasonably be expected from the commonalty; it was remarkable how well some of them did behave on occasions

He was quite without class conscousness because he saw the whole intricate social structure of his country divided neatly into two unequal and unmistakeable parts. On the one side stood the Crouchbacks and certain inconspicuous, anciently allied families; on the other stood the rest of mankind, Box-Bender, the butcher, the Duke of Omnium (whose onetime wealth derived from monastic spoils), Lloyd George, Neville Chamberlain - all of a piece together. Mr Crouchback acknowledged no monarch since James II. It was not an entirely sane conspectus but it engendered in his gentle breast two rare qualities, tolerance and humility. For nothing much, he assumed, could reasonably be expected from the commonalty; it was remarkable how well some of them did behave on occasions; while, for himself, any virtue he had came from afar without his deserving, and every small fault was grossly culpable in a man of his high tradition.

E. Waugh, Men at Arms (1952), in collected edition, Sword of Honour (1984), 28  

Note the nice Trollope reference to the Duke of Omnium

Barcelona had been the clever, rich uncle, aloof, scarcely Spanish at all

After the medieval towns and villages of central Spain, Barcelona revealed an alien industrial Europe, long squat suburbs and shabby concrete factories - a language far more cynical, knowing and enervating than the primitive naiveties of Castile.

The small greedy streets crossed each other like lines in a ledger, leading finally to the grand ruled boulevards. Compared with dandy, spendthrift Madrid, Barcelona had been the clever, rich uncle, aloof, scarcely Spanish at all. All its fine calculations, now, seemed blurred, blotted and cancelled. Across banks and offices sagged the war's first banner of defiance and challenge, muted and fading as the grey figures in the streets.

L. Lee, A moment of war (1991), 166-7

The chance to make one grand, uncomplicated gesture of personal sacrifice

You could pick out the British by their nervous jerking heads, native air of suspicion, and constant stream of self-effacing jokes. These, again, could be divided up into the ex-convicts, the alcoholics, the wizened miners, dockers, noisy politicos and dreamy undergraduates busy scribbling manifestos and notes to their boyfriends. ... I believe, we shared something else, unique to us at the time - the chance to make one grand, uncomplicated gesture of personal sacrifice and faith which might never occur again. Certainly, it was the last time this century that a generation had such an opportunity before the fog of nationalism and mass slaughter closed in.

L. Lee, A moment of war (1991), 45-46

Third-rate works surround an outstanding work without any recognition of what fundamentally differentiates them

Visitors to art museums are often overwhelmed by the number of works on display, and by what they take to be their cupable inability to concentrate on more than a few if these works. In fact such a reaction is reasonable. Art history has totally failed to  come to terms with the problem of the relationship between the outstanding work and the average work of the European tradition. The notion of genius is not in itself an adequate answer. Consequently the confusion remains on the walls of the galleries. Third-rate works surround an outstanding work without any recognition - let alone explanation - of what fundamentally differentiates them. 

J. Berger, Ways of seeing (1972), 88

Why couldn't her grandfather be waiting for us in a saner, less baroque place?

How tall was this mountain anyway? Why couldn't her grandfather be waiting for us in a saner, less baroque place?

H. Murakami, Hard boiled wonderland and the End of the World (1985), 241

Travel, mountain-climbing, dabbling in occult rituals, and financing the publication of luxurious editions of his own poetry

Of all the people who frequented the Chat Blanc, no one was more bizarre nor as interesting to Maugham as Aleister Crowley. An eccentric English poet and Satanist, Crowley had inherited £40,000, which he soon exhausted on travel, mountain-climbing, dabbling in occult rituals, and financing the publication of luxurious editions of his own poetry.

R. Calder, Willie: the life of W. Somerset Maugham

But for the invasion of steam, the Barbary corsairs might still be with us

For a thousand years – from 830 to 1830 – from the days when the Amalfitans worn the proud title of “Defenders of the Faith” up to those of the sentimental poet Waiblinger (1826), these shores were infested by Oriental ruffians, whose activities were an unmitigated evil. It is all well and good for Admiral de la Graviere to speak of “Gallia Victrix” – the Americans, too, might have something to say on that point. The fact is that neither European nor American arms crushed the pest. But for the invasion of steam, the Barbary corsairs might still be with us.

N. Douglas, Old Calabria (1915), 139

The state is the most precious of human possessions

The state is the most precious of human possessions .. and no care can be too great to be spent on enabling it to do its work in the best way

Alfred Marshall (1919), quoted in J. Micklethwait and A. Wooldridge, 'The State of the State' Foreign Affairs 93:4 (2014), 118

But my dear, nothing beats Vatican gossip

... Steven Runciman, whom Paddy had met in Sofia in 1934 and who was now the British Council's Representative. Tall , fastidious and a brilliant linguist, Runciman was then working on the History of the Crusades that made his name; but his chief recreation was collecting scandals and stories. 'Royal gossip is very good,' he once said, 'and political gossip is even better; but my dear, nothing beats Vatican gossip.'

A. Cooper, Patrick Leigh Fermor: an adventure (2013), 206

Where else could a presenter get away with saying 'Can I move on to Burckhardt?'

The first, In Our Time, has been described as 'the most cerebral 45 minutes on British radio'. In the course of just one series, for instance, it has tackled Homer's Odyssey, Eighteenth Century Politeness, Agincourt, The Origins of Life, Jean-Paul Satre, and Pi. In each edition, Melvyn Bragg chairs a sustained discussion between three academic experts. On paper the format is utterly forbidding; it is certainly characterized by a high level of seriousness. As one reviewer points out, where else could a presenter get away with saying 'Can I move on to Burckhardt?' or talk of 'the Renaissance reaction against scholasticism and the Ciceronian reaction against Olympian theology'?

D. Hendy, Life on air: a history of Radio Four (2007), 397

To be its Controller was like inheriting a long-established country estate

[David Hatch] talked of Radio Four as 'the soul of the BBC', 'the last bastion' of the Reithian mission to inform, educate, and entertain. To be its Controller was like inheriting a long-established country estate that has to be handed on intact.

D. Hendy, Life on air: a history of Radio Four (2007), 299

The bloodiest outrage he had ever known

Asked during an interview whether he [Kenneth Tynan] would allow the National Theatre to stage a play in which there was sexual intercourse, he had replied 'Oh, I think so' - and then added with characteristic mischief, 'I doubt if there are very many rational people in the world to whom the word "fuck" is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.' It was, a Daily Express columnist declared with predictable irrationality, 'the bloodiest outrage' he had 'ever known'.

D. Hendy, Life on air: a history of Radio Four (2007), 101

It was the kind of series that would not have felt out of place in the 1950s

Kenneth Clark's Civilization. This was to be expensively produced, erudite in an unashamedly patrician manner, and blithely uninterested in anything other than the highest cultural artefacts of western art. Technical polish and colour film aside, it was the kind of series that would not have felt out of place in the 1950s.

D. Hendy, Life on Air: a history of Radio Four (2007), 20

This emphasis on virtue is the hardest thing to take for modern readers of Dickens

Of course the darkness in Dickens always contrasts with the light, even though nowadays it is the 'darker' aspects that stand out more in our reading of him. The light usually radiates from young girls who are all the more virtuous and kind-hearted the more steeped they are in a kind of black hell. This emphasis on virtue is the hardest thing to take for modern readers of Dickens.

I. Calvino, 'Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend' (1983), in ed. Why read the classics? (1991), tr. M. McLaughlin (1999), 147

The contemporary world may be banal and stultifying

The contemporary world may be banal and stultifying, but it is always the context in which we have to place ourselves to look either forwards or backwards. In order to read the classic, you have to establish where exactly you are reading them 'from', otherwise both the reader and the text tend to drift in a timeless haze.

I. Calvino, 'Why read the classics?' (1981), in ed. Why read the classics? (1991), tr. M. McLaughlin (1999), 8

It would be too little to say that his bearing was confident

It would be too little to say that his bearing was confident: he comported himself with the care-free jauntiness of an infant about to demolish a Noah's Ark with a tack-hammer.

P.G. Wodehouse, The adventures of Sally (1922), 158

The back of old envelopes never enter his life

Bruce Carmyle wrote the information down in a dapper little morocco-bound notebook. He was the sort of man who always has a pencil, and the back of old envelopes never enter his life

P.G. Wodehouse, The adventures of Sally (1922), 60

Poor Mexico

Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States

General V. Huerta, quoted in C.Emmerson, 1913: the world before the Great War (2013), 208

It is hard to domesticate an emu, and no-one ever rode a kangaroo into battle

The zoological lottery that Jared Diamond describes - the pure chance of whether your local animals can be domesticated - enormously favoured Europe and Asia. Australia, by contrast drew a very short straw. It is hard to domesticate an emu, and no-one ever rode a kangaroo into battle. The Americas were almost as badly off, but they did have the llama. Llamas cannot compete with horses for speed, or donkeys for pack power; they also have an infuriating habit, when tired, of just stopping and refusing to move. But they are extraordinarily well adapted to high altitude; they cope well with the cold and can forage for their own food; they cab provide wool, meat and manure; and, although they cannot carry people, a healthy llama can comfortably transport about 30 kilograms of goods.

N. MacGregor, A history of the world in 100 objects (2010), 403
[73: Inca gold llama]

If you take a historical view, it is bureaucracy that sees you through the rocky patches

Modern politicians proudly announce their desire to sweep away bureaucracy. The contemporary prejudice is that it slows you down, clogs things up; but if you take a historical view, it is bureaucracy that sees you through the rocky patches and enables the state to survive. Bureaucracy is not evidence of inertia ... it can be life-saving continuity - and nowhere is that clearer than China. China is the longest surviving state in the world and it is no coincidence that it has the longest tradition of bureaucracy

N. MacGregor, A history of the world in 100 objects (2010), 395
[71: Tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent]

We've been foodies as long as we've been farmers

Constant harvesting of the grain encouraged the plants to grow larger and more abundantly, so maize quickly became plentiful - farmers generally got a healthy return on their invested labour. Crucially, maize is a rich carbohydrate that gives you a rapid energy hit. Unfortunately, it is also pretty stodgy, and so from very early on farmers cultivated an ingenious accompaniment - the indigenous chilli. It has limited nutritional value, but it is uniquely able to liven up dull carbohydrates - and its development and widespread use across Central America is a resounding demonstration that we've been foodies as long as we've been farmers.

N. MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 objects (2010), 47 [9: Maya maize god statue]

A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue

I detest Punningans Wake in which a cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory

V. Nabokov, quoted in H. Gold, 'Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40', The Paris Review 41 (1967). <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov> Retrieved 27.3.14

The existence of Simla was itself a comment on the astonishing complacency of the British in India

The existence of Simla was itself a comment on the astonishing complacency of the British in India at this period: for seven months of the year, the Company ruled one-fifth of mankind from a Himalayan village overlooking the borders of Tibet and connected to the outside world by a road little better than a goat path. 

W. Dalrymple, Return of a King (2013), 130

There is a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach

There is a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach
But alas! I cannot swim

Khushal Khan, quoted in W. Dalrymple, Return of a King (2013), 17
Though the endnotes sadly tell us that 'many scholars doubt the authenticity of this celebrated couplet'

The sea has become the land, in that it is now the usual medium of transit: not barrier but corridor

The discovery of the sea roads necessitated a radical re-imagining of the history of Europe. Try it yourself, now. Invert the mental map you have of Britain, Ireland and western Europe. Turn it inside out. Blank out the land interiors of these countries - consider them featureless, as you might have previously considered the sea. Instead, populate the western and northern eaters with paths and tracks: a travel system that joins port to port, island to island, headland to headland,  river mouth to river mouth. The sea has become the land, in that it is now the usual medium of transit: not barrier but corridor.

R. MacFarlane, The Old Ways (2012), 92-3

One does not advertise ideas as though they were laxatives or toothpaste

'One does not advertise ideas as though they were laxatives or toothpaste,' said the Emperor Karl, last of the Hapsburg Emperors of Austria-Hungary - a mistaken opinion which was one of the contributory causes of his own downfall and the disintegration of an empire which had endured (in various forms) for a millennium.

L. Hughes - Hallet, The Pike (2013), 382

And the newspapers someone dares to be happy because there were no human victims!

He [Nietzsche] was an aesthete, and not only in a green-carnation-wearing, stained-glass fancying sense of the word. He was one who valued beauty far higher than justice or human kindness, D'Annunzio would respond in the same spirit to the collapse of the campanile in Venice's Piazza San Marco in 1902.He was prostrated by grief, weeping, and pacing from room to room all day, unable to work. 'And the newspapers someone dares to be happy because there were no human victims!' To him the pain and death of his fellow beings would have been insignificant, by comparison with the loss of an harmonious architectural ensemble. 'Innumerable human victims would not be enough to compensate.'

L. Hughes - Hallet, The Pike (2013), 237

It is, he claims, the battle yell of Achilles

Twelve days earlier,  d'Annunzio, ever attentive to the ritual of warfare,  has taught his squadron a new battle cry. Instead of the 'Ip, Ip, Ip, Urrah!' which he finds crude and barbarous,  he has ordered them to shout the Greek: 'Eia, Eia, Eia, Alala!' It is, he claims, the battle yell of Achilles.

L. Hughes-Hallet, The Pike (2013), 38

The only non-royal people slightly superior, in his eyes, to the rank and file of his subjects, were dukes

Père Tellier,a Jesuit who came to be loathed so much that he was perhaps chiefly responsible for the expulsion of his Order from France. A sort of Rasputin, with ardent, black eyes in a false, terrible face, ignorant and wildly ambitious, he was a peasant and boasted of it to the King, who was unimpressed since in his eyes the peasantry and the bourgeoisie rated exactly the same - the only non-royal people slightly superior, in his eyes, to the rank and file of his subjects, were dukes.

N. Mitford, The Sun King (1966), 222-223

He had three further reasons for disliking the Dutch: the republicanism which seemed ingrained in their character, their Protestantism and their pamphlets

Co-operation with the Dutch did occur to Louis. he offered his daughter Marie-Anne to be the wife of William of Orange and received a humiliating rebuff. William said that in his family one married the legitimate daughters of kings, not their bastards. ... Louis XIV, always touchy on the subject of his illegitimate family, never forgave William the insult. He had three further reasons for disliking the Dutch: the republicanism which seemed ingrained in their character, their Protestantism and their pamphlets. His own press was strictly censored, but disagreeable observations on himself, his policy and his family never stopped coming off the printing presses of The Hague and Amsterdam.

N. Mitford, The Sun King (1966), 19

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. 

G. Orwell, 'Notes on nationalism' (1945), in Essays (1984), 312

They went to the Church with a world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with power and prestige behind it

But what do you achieve, after all, by getting rid of such primal things as patriotism and religion? You have not necessarily got rid of the need for something to believe in. There had been a sort of false dawn a few years earlier when numbers of young intellectuals, including several quite gifted writers (Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Hollis, and others), had fled into the Catholic Church. It is significant that these people went almost invariably to the Roman Church and not, for instance, to the C. of E., the Greek Church, or the Protestants sects. They went, that is, to the Church with a world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with power and prestige behind it. Perhaps it is even worth noticing that the only latter-day convert of really first-rate gifts, Eliot, has embraced not Romanism but Anglo-Catholicism, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Trotskyism. But I do not think one need look farther than this for the reason why the young writers of the thirties flocked into or towards the Communist Party. It was simply something to believe in. Here was a Church, an army, an orthodoxy, a discipline. Here was a Fatherland and — at any rate since 1935 or thereabouts — a Fuehrer.

G. Orwell, 'Inside the Whale' (1940), in Essays (1984), 121-2

I think 'Inside the Whale' is my favourite of all of Orwell's essays, certainly of the political ones. To be honest people should just read the whole thing. 

I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster

I don’t know,’ said Srikanda, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s all part of the world opening up. After all, as my son says, this is the age of computers. And as much as I might want otherwise, I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster.'

W. Dalrymple, Nine Lives (2009), Kindle edition, location 3776

The technology used to turn wheat into Toyotas out in the Pacific is called ‘Japan’

Economist David Friedman observes, for instance, that there are two ways for the United States to produce cars: they can build them in Detroit, or they can grow them in Iowa. Growing them in Iowa makes use of a special technology that turns wheat into Toyotas: simply put the wheat onto ships and send them out into the Pacific ocean. The ships come back a short while later with Toyotas on them. The technology used to turn wheat into Toyotas out in the Pacific is called ‘Japan’, but it could just as easily be a futuristic biofactory floating off the coast of Hawaii.

T. Harford, The undercover economist (2010), Kindle edition, location 3312

Their basic political assumptions are two: nothing ever changes, and foreigners are funny

Naturally the politics of the Gem and Magnet are Conservative, but in a completely pre-1914 style, with no Fascist tinge. In reality their basic political assumptions are two: nothing ever changes, and foreigners are funny ... The assumption all along is not only that foreigners are comics who are put there for us to laugh at, but that they can be classified in much the same way as insects. That is why in all boys' papers, not only the Gem and Magnet, a Chinese is invariably portrayed with a pigtail. It is the thing you recognize him by, like the Frenchman's beard or the Italian's barrel-organ. In papers of this kind it occasionally happens that when the setting of a story is in a foreign country some attempt is made to describe the natives as individual human beings, but as a rule it is assumed that foreigners of any one race are all alike and will conform more or less exactly to the following patterns:

FRENCHMAN: Excitable. Wears beard, gesticulates wildly.
SPANIARD, MEXICAN etc. : Sinister, treacherous.
ARAB, AFGHAN etc.: Sinister, treacherous.
CHINESE: Sinister, treacherous. Wears pigtails.
ITALIAN: Excitable. Grinds barrel-organ or carries stiletto.
SWEDE, DANE etc.: Kind-hearted, stupid.
NEGRO: Comic, very faithful.

G. Orwell, 'Boys' Weeklies' (1940), in Essays (1984), 88

It is my stern belief that sweet wines of high quality ... are best enjoyed on their own

Although there are a few combinations of food and sweet wine that complement each other - like foie gras and Sauternes - it is my stern belief that sweet wines of high quality (and there is no point drinking any other kind) are best enjoyed on their own. While it is certainly true that strong swaggering sweet wines, such as Anghelu Ruju or Amarone, will not be overpowered by even the richest desserts, I see little point in struggling to accommodate two elements that are best enjoyed separately.

S. Brook, Liquid Gold: dessert wines of the world (1987), 282