Popular imagination likes its fast bowlers to be ale swilling extroverts

Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards and John Augustine Snow, poet, thinker, introvert would surely be one of the last to disagree with the Old Arab proverb. Assaulted on the boundary edge of a great Test arena, dropped by his county for lack of effort, stood in a corner by England's selectors for barging over an Indian Test batsman at Lord's and while all this was swirling around him, writing and getting published a volume of poems -- controversy, thy name was Snow, in the early 1970's. Popular imagination likes its fast bowlers to be ale swilling extroverts, but this enigmatic cricketer refuses to be typed ... reading, music, painting, poetry are as necessary to him as food and fresh air ... He owes his inclusion in one of the most coveted sections of this Almanack to none of these things. He is here on naked merit, which first played a major part in bringing The Ashes back home to England after an absence of twelve years and then helped keep them here last summer. A haul of 55 wickets in two series against Australia is his passport to cricket immortality. 

B. Easterbrook, 'FIFTY YEARS AGO: John Snow', L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2022), 1483

Looking up the original 1973 Cricketers of the year text, I discover this also brilliant anecdote: At the England team's Harrogate hotel during the fourth Test at Leeds last July, Basil d'Oliveira in an animated dinner table conversation said to him "The ultimate thing in life is to play for England." Snow replied quietly "The ultimate thing in life is death."

There's a woman in there!

Change hurts. The Daily Telegraph's E.W. "Jim" Swanton once burst out of the committee room here at Lord's, exclaiming in a hoarse and outraged whisper, "There's a woman in there!" "Yes, Jim, of course there is," it was the explained. "It's the Saturday of the Ashes Test. It's the Queen." Jim absorbed this for a second, before coming back with "Nevertheless..."

S. Fry, 'MCC Cowdrey lecture',  L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2022), 124

Asked to name the current players he admired, he replied: "None."

Where the dreamy Dexter enjoyed flights of fancy, Ray Illingworth was the canny Yorkshireman. Asked by The Cricketer around the time of his appointment to name the current players he admired, he replied: "None." Nothing during his reign [as chair of selectors] suggested a change of heart.

R. Hobson, 'A history of selection', L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2022), 95

That moment when French culture was at its most refined, most searching

I've finally understood what this house is about, this extraordinary attempt to make one space after another work without discomfort or falsity. You want to make a perfect stage set for conversation, enlightenment, for that moment when French culture was at its most refined, most searching.

E. de Waal, Letters to Camondo (2021), 111

A separate pantry for decanting wine

In this house one room leads onwards, unfolds, interlocks. I stand in your library and can go in three directions. The grand salon leads to four other spaces. There are alcoves and spiral staircases from bedrooms up to the servants' rooms so that clothes can appear and disappear. You catch sight of a winding staircase arcing up, bisected by a balcony. There is a hidden suite of rooms for the butler, a silver chamber, a separate pantry for decanting wine.

I think your bathroom might be the only room with one door.

E. de Waal, Letters to Camondo (2021), 52

She had not reckoned with the sheer force of routine in a rich nineteenth-century household

Laura did not achieve the new way of living with her baby which she had wished. She had not reckoned with the sheer force of routine in a rich nineteenth-century household. Had she decided to live by herself with her illegitimate child—and this would have meant becoming a bohemian—she might have succeeded. As it was, in her mother’s house in Paris, her plans were defeated by nurse-maids, chambermaids, the housekeeper, her mother’s doctor. It was not possible for her to be with the child for more than a couple of hours a day. It was not possible for her to occupy herself with all the daily chores connected with looking after him—washing linen, ironing, cleaning the nursery, preparing his food, etc.; there were servants to do such jobs. The most that she could achieve was bathing him in the late afternoon under the eyes of the nurse and the maid who brought up the hot water.

J. Berger, G (1974), 27

I have. With icing for his beard. They were fantastic.

One of the top-selling items in Highgate's small gift shops in a cookie-cutter in the shape of Karl Marx. 'Before we had the cookie-cutter, we sold lots of The Communist Manifesto,' Nick Powell, the visitor experience manager, told me. 'The sales of those have dropped off dramatically.'
'Did you have to think carefully,' I asked 'whether it was right to stock the cookie-cutters?'
'Do you mean are we dishonouring Marx by selling these things?'
'Yes,' I said. 'By bringing capitalism to bear upon his image.'
Powell laughed. He seemed to think the question absurdly po-faced, and perhaps it was. So I tried another: Have you ever made any Marx cookies yourself?'
'I have,' he said nodding. 'With icing for his beard. They were fantastic.'  

P. Ross,  A tomb with a view (2020), 117

Their role is to sit in the pew and watch it taking place

An Anglican requiem mass (he [Julian Litten], unlike Cola, believes in life after death) will take place at All Saints, King's Lynn, at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday morning - 'Wednesdays are always good days for funerals. If anyone wants to come up from London, they can catch the 9.44 and will be in good time.'

From the balcony of the church, a trumpet, trombone, kettle drum and choir will play the Prelude to Charpentier's Te Deum - and the funeral will begin. It will be done properly, soberly, tastefully, which is to say in accordance with tradition. ... 'There will be no eulogies,' he sneered. 'Nobody standing up and talking about me. No ghastly child reading a poem and bursting into tears. No member of the laity reading any of the lessons. I think it's tish. Rubbish. It's got nothing to do with the English funeral. Their role is to sit in the pew and watch it taking place.  

P. Ross,  A tomb with a view (2020), 31

Rufa not only had the kind of hair which inspired poets, she read German theology in the original

Rufa [Elizabeth Rebecca Brabant] not only had the kind of hair which inspired poets, she read German theology in the original and enjoyed the love of a kind, clever man.

K. Hughes, George Eliot: the last Victorian (1998), 91

Revolution, liberation and upheaval were to have no place in Mary Ann’s moral world.

Revolution, liberation and upheaval were to have no place in Mary Ann’s moral world.

Nor were they to have any in her fiction. George Eliot’s heroes and heroines may struggle against their small-minded communities, but in the course of their lives they learn that true heroism entails giving up the glory of conflict. Reconciliation with what previously seemed petty is the way that leads to moral growth.

K. Hughes, George Eliot: the last Victorian (1998), 78

The idea would be to live half a life very well.

'I don't like being alone at all,; she said. 'To live a life without physical intimacy is half a life.'
I thought this was true, but if that was the case the idea would be to live half a life very well.

D. Levy, Real Estate (2021), 189

If old women are supposed to not want to cause any trouble, Celia had decided to cause as much trouble as possible

Celia was one of the few women I knew who was very like herself. She was more like herself than I was like myself. She did not try to please anyone and certainly did not fit the patriarchy's idea of what an old woman should be like: patient, self-sacrificing, servicing everyone's needs, pretending to be cheerful when she felt suicidal. If old women are supposed to not want to cause any trouble, Celia had decided to cause as much trouble as possible.

D. Levy, Real Estate (2021), 124

How would a writer set about the massive task of giving a female character no consciousness

How would a writer set about the massive task of giving a female character no consciousness, not even an unconscious life, as if that were the most normal thing in the world? Perhaps it was normal in his world. And yet it takes a lot of work to construct any sort of character in fiction.

D. Levy, Real Estate (2021), 17