Word: bowler
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...exists. The world of 1955, distressed by its own faithlessness, may long for something more than the hard sneer of a peasant who has made good in the city. But the man had power and style, and his best stories have the indestructibility of the peasant's Sunday bowler...
...Vaudeville. When the big brains among the club members read their case histories of changed identities, Author Dennis shows himself at his best. Vinson's is a sad case. Back from the war he finds the old England swept away: "All the initials have gone from inside the bowler hats." With mystic joy he accepts the unpaid, unwanted post of Co-Warden of the Badgeries, an ancient symbolic office whose sole relic is a stuffed badger. Hardly has his new identity begun to cover him when he is killed as he falls on a pike during a symbolic parade...
Major Thompson is a retired, red-faced British officer who wears a bowler hat and barks "By Jove!" His name is, of course, Marmaduke, but Humorist Daninos, not wishing to make his countrymen die laughing, has not named the major's son Fauntleroy. The major's first wife, Ursula, was a British horsewoman with a face like a mare, feet like briefcases and that aversion to sex which most Britons have had since they became neighbors of the French. "Do as I did," Ursula's mother advises, "just close your eyes and think of England!" After Ursula...
...prove his courage. When he finally does, rifle and bayonet in hand, the irony of Fate-and of military life-turns his act of bravery into his undoing: the generals consider him a bad commander for dashing about the battlefield "like a private." Even after the army has bowler-hatted him, human and humorous Scotsman Strang clings to his belief in the Many-Splendoured Thing-his phrase for honor, decency and civilization. British Author Marshall (The White Rabbit, Father Malachy's Miracle) keeps his story moving almost too fast. But he has a great ear for the speech...
...Bowler & Pince Nez. Bidault comes from central France, the son of an insurance man. He taught himself to read at six, and was educated by the Jesuits. Bidault was deeply influenced by a scholarship prize he won at the age of 15: a book on Montalembert, the 19th century political philosopher who strove to fuse Roman Catholicism with Liberalism. Bidault went on to the Sorbonne, then to teaching (history and geography) in a lycee. In his 30s Bidault looked so young that a proctor at the school once reprimanded him for smoking; he took to wearing a bowler...