“... or anyone else out of it. His theories are of the soft baggy sort which can contain any evidence. Saki, Kipling and P.G. Wodehouse were all separated from their parents when children. ‘As a result all three suffered subsequently from difficulties in making close relationships and tended to show more affection towards animals or children than they were able ...”

“... monkey the guariba howler the bugio howler the spider monkey the woolly monkey the bearded saki the tufted cairara, all the forty monkeys of Brazil, all of em, gaped drooling with envy.’Andrade described his novel as a ‘rhapsody’. It was a kind of improvisation, he wanted readers to think, as though created by one of the travelling singers in the ...”

“... And he also saw life as a comedy. The forbears of his generation – Wilde, Shaw, Beerbohm, Saki, Firbank, Strachey. Wode-house – bred at Oxford a collection of wits some of whose humour has perished since it found no other form than conversation. This was the generation of Bowra, Betjeman, Harold Acton, John Sutro, Connolly, Powell and Alan ...”

“... there is one self-contained boy, who is neat, smart and prematurely sophisticated, a boy out of Saki. Finally the sixth form: half a dozen boys and one girl. Except not boys: one has a full-grown beard and though destined for Cambridge looks less like an undergraduate than a fully-fledged lecturer; another, ignoring us completely as they all do, sits ...”