40. Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 268. Though about Churchill, “When he writes in a Gibbonian manner, I do not admire his prose” (273).

41. “It was very difficult to sound as if we were unbearably chilly and matter-of-fact, like English people in foreign plays, but the danger was so close, the appalling size of the smash-up so apparent, that the only thing to do was what everyone else was doing, keeping a steady eyes-front. Once you looked sideways, once you looked round, once you let your imagination out, you knew you might lose your head. Clearly the thing to do was to get yourself into a certain definite frame of mind and keep it at all costs, even if it made you slightly stupid. Everyone I met in the village seemed to be doing this instinctively” (Allingham, The Oaken Heart, 170).