Sunday 29 October 2023

I came across these today

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"Had I remained my reign might have produced quarrel after quarrel with the Government. I would have clashed with them, I am sure, over Germany.” Duke of Windsor (King Edward VIII) in a part of his memoirs not published until now (Once a King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII, Jane Marguerite Tippett)

“He loves to tell that old story of the don who was granted an interview with Napoleon. “No doubt a remarkable fellow,” said the don afterwards, “but anyone can see he’s not a Cambridge man.” Guy Pringle talking about Lord Pinkrose in Olivia Manning's The Spoilt City, (second volume of The Balkan Trilogy).

"I don't see how one's to eliminate class-consciousness without eliminating classics-consciousness. God knows why it should be so, but as a matter of observation it seems to me quite certain that the whole legend of the "English gentleman" has been built up on Latin and Greek. A. meets B. on the steps of his club, and says, "Well, old man, eheu fugaces, what?", and B. says "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", and the crossing-sweeper falls on his knees in adoration of two men who can talk as learnedly as that. Nobody can really explain the ridiculous prominence the classics still have in English education except by admitting that what saves them is their snob-value." Mgr. Ronald Knox, (Let Dons Delight: Being Variations on a Theme in an Oxford Common-Room, 1939).

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