Word: britishism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...troubled day in 1942 Britain's Harold Macmillan, then British representative at General Eisenhower's North African headquarters, wound up a policy discussion with France's Charles de Gaulle with the exasperated statement: "General, you are a most impossible man to deal with." Macmillan was not heard to repeat the remark last week, but the sentiment may well have crossed his mind. For last week, all by himself, Charles de Gaulle seemed to have succeeded in postponing summit talks, perhaps until next spring...
...Luck & Ammunition. The Spaniards and British had about 200 vessels between them, and no one really knew how to maneuver such numbers of warships, nor had anyone foreseen the length of the running battle (nine days) and the amount of ammunition needed. Another unpredictable-factor was the newly designed British ships, smaller and faster than the traditional men-of-war; with them, the British hoped to abandon the old tactics of close fighting and grappling, instead intended to stand off and demolish the Spanish ships with long guns. This plan did not work; gunnery was so imprecise that no captain...
...deep-water port, and Spain's fighting ships could not get within miles of Dunkirk's beach. Parma had only a few rotting barges to bridge the distance. But as things turned out, the Duke never had his chance to drown because the Armada, intercepted by the British, never got near Dunkirk. This monumental snafu is typical of one of history's most inept naval campaigns...
Orde Wingate, by Christopher Sykes. A first-rate biography of the stumpy, tempestuous British jungle fighter who became World War IPs Lion of Burma...
...written the part as a symbol of the expansive American spirit that has destroyed the world of gentility and graces in which Amanda Wingfield tries so desperately to live. If Jim occasionally comes across as crudely caricatured, like an American (like the American) in a British book or movie or play, it is largely because Mr. Williams has written him that way, and because Mr. Hancock has made him sprawl and slouch and lean. When Mr. Gesell is allowed to be nice and ordinary, as in most of his achingly poignant scene with Miss Humphreys, he too does fine work...