The colour of old brown sherry

Madge Bettany was good to look at. She was slight to the verge of thinness, with a well-poised head covered by a mop of curly dark brown hair.  Her eyes were dark brown too - the colour of old brown sherry - and were shaded by long, upcurling, black lashes.

E.M. Brent-Dyer, The school at the chalet (1925), 5

Amazingly, this description is on the very first page of the entire sequence of chalet school stories. I am heartened to think that teenage girls of the 1920s would have been expected to know what old sherry looked like.

Labyrinthine tales of faction-fighting and off-the-record press briefings that reminded me of nothing so much as the British Labour Party

Azhar, they told me, was not the meek and inoffensive character he seemed, a point they illustrated by recounting labyrinthine tales of faction-fighting and off-the-record press briefings that reminded me of nothing so much as the British Labour Party. Eventually we turned to English cricket, and I was asked, why weren't Ramprakash and Hussain given the same number of chances as Hick? Before I could answer I was told, 'It's about this'. My colleague was touching the brown skin on his forearm.

M. Marqusee, War minus the shooting (1996), 121

If men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed

There is true art in it, this command of tea and dinner tables; this animating correctness. Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movements of nations; they may consider war and the search for God to be great literature's only subjects; but if men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed

M. Cunningham, The Hours (1998), 83-84