Search Results

“... anyone had yet seen, five times the size of the three ships in which Columbus and his men were to sail into the western Indies at the end of the century. There were 317 of them on the first expedition, some carrying men, 28,000 of them in all, some horses, some food, some arms, one, fresh water. The object was not entirely clear. The Chinese took silk and ...”

“... many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her’. Lawrence Selden who watches her, is ‘aware that the qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to vulgar clay’. Two years earlier, W.B. Yeats had published ...”

“... with the rest. Several, towing their druggs, will make easy pickings for other whaling ships. D.H. Lawrence thought this ‘the most stupendous chapter’ in the book, and quoted at length from the aquarium scenes, stressing the ‘submarine bridal chambers’ within the nursery. Always eager to spell things out (‘amazing monsters . . . in rut’), ...”

“... brought to order when, in the end, everybody died. It was a vainglorious mishmash of Dostoevsky, Lawrence and Huxley – to name but a few. With the temerity of youthful unconsciousness I sent the typescript to Eyre and Spottiswoode (I think it was), who had announced a competition for new novels. It came back without comment. After active service with the ...”

“... old wooden barge which for many years had carried cargoes up and down the east coast under sail, but was now a battered, patched, caulked, tar-blackened hulk’. Grace was moored on Chelsea Reach, then as now ‘one of the very grandest parts of London’. The boat was cold, leaky, rat-infested and insanitary, ‘a total disaster area … mortifying ...”

“... the river has two yards left. The first lies far upstream – about as far upstream as a ship can sail these days – in Govan, where the defence contractor BAE Systems makes warships for the Royal Navy on the site of the old Fairfield yard. The second is Ferguson’s in Port Glasgow, the last merchant shipbuilder in Scotland and one of only three to survive ...”

“... There’s an instance of that in the paper this morning, one of the officers criticised in the Lawrence inquiry off to pastures new with his pension and his hurt feelings. It’s also reported this morning that two of the presumably incriminating rifles used in the Bloody Sunday shootings and supposedly in the safe keeping of the Ministry of Defence have ...”