Word: birkenhead
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Burly of stature but impeccably sleek, the Earl of Birkenhead vacationed last week at Funchal, balmy and (in winter) fashionable port-city of Madeira. Careless of his dignity as Secretary of State for India and a onetime (1919-22) Lord Chancellor, the Earl rode about by day in a canopied sled drawn by bullocks-the peculiar means of transport on this Portuguese isle. At eve, Lord Birkenhead dined, naturally at one of the great hotels-the same in which George Bernard Shaw stopped when he visited Madeira, two winters ago. There the dancing master who taught Mr. Shaw to tango...
...dinner waxed, two dapper gentlemen at a nearby table saw Lord Birkenhead look upon the .wine of Madeira-and it was red. Then the dapper gentlemen began a spelling match, quite innocently, between themselves. Soon they, shrewd sharpers, were betting on each other's spelling prowess. When the game was ripening to high stakes one of the so dapper gentlemen approached the Earl of Birkenhead. "We know Your Lordship is a great student of the English language. . . . Perhaps Your Lordship will spell two score words against my friend-?100 to the winner. . . . Your Lordship has the repute of being...
...note of Lord Birkenhead's political life is, the note of an easy flippancy. . . . His brains, as Lady Oxford wittily remarked, went to his head...
...isolation is unprecedented. He has personal friends, the chief being that other kindred spirit, Lord Birkenhead, and his loyalty to them is notorious; but he is an Ishmael in public life, loathed by the Tories whom he left and has now returned to; distrusted by the Liberals, on whose backs he first mounted to power; hated by Labor, whom he scorns and insults, and who see in him the potential Mussolini of a wave of reaction...
...Earl of Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India: "There has been no more spectacular career in our time than his. . . . He is frankly an adventurer, and declares himself...