Tuesday, 13 August 2013

The beer had been far too inadequate to make them drunk; it made them only moody and reflective

›
One of the infrequent rations of beer was given out the same night, and the men finished their three cans quickly, and sat around without s...
Monday, 12 August 2013

Kennington! What a place for a poet to die!

›
'I wish you had left him in Soho,' he said, with a wave of his long, thin hands. 'There was a touch of romance in that sordid a...
Wednesday, 7 August 2013

Church of England services ... harmless enough compared to murder.

›
What your grandfather would feel if he knew we had the police in the house - it's enough to make him turn in his grave. A strict Plymou...
Tuesday, 6 August 2013

Enthusiasm was ill-bred. Enthusiasm was ungentlemanly.

›
It was Winks who summed up the general impression and put it into a form they all felt was conclusively damning ... 'He's very en...
Monday, 5 August 2013

It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools

›
Despite attending a nominally Christian school, I had not yet been inside a church - and I wasn't about to dare the deed now. I knew ve...
Friday, 2 August 2013

The modern world ... the last two thousand years — just oughtn’t to have happened.

›
[I]t tickles me, in 1938, to find someone objecting to having a radio in the house. Porteous was strolling up and down in his usual dreamy ...
Thursday, 1 August 2013

But this one, it seems, is a different kind of Communist and not-quite, because he’s what they call a Trotskyist

›
Immediately in front of me the local Communist Party branch were sitting. All three of them very young. One of them’s got money and is some...