Word: donnish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Guaranteed Bonhomie. Wilson's blueprint for scientific socialism, as he expounded it to the Labor Conference, accords with the Gaitskell philosophy-but, with a significant difference: if it had come from donnish Hugh Gaitskell, it would probably have been ripped to shreds. Says Gaitskellite Denis Healey: "The intellectual way Gaitskell advanced his ideas forced many to oppose them. When Wilson says the same thing, he does it in such a way that others do not feel compelled to disagree...
...Affair is an affair of justice, treated with a Galsworthy-like concern for the niceties of fair play. Judiciously adapted by Ronald Millar from the novel by C. P. Snow, the play relies on tension rather than passion, and its evocation of an English university milieu is donnish, literate and civilized...
...Michael Ramsey is also a complex churchman who is facing complex 20th century problems. A Cambridge-trained scholar and theologian, he came to Canterbury with a reputation for both deep spirituality and donnish wit-a man unwilling to compromise his own stern theology, but so fond of epigrams that he gives them up for Lent. Frankly at home in high-church ceremony, he nonetheless seems at times the amiable country parson, enjoying simple amusement in self-deflation. Archbishop Ramsey always signs his name "Michael Cantuar"-the traditional Latin abbreviation for Canterbury -but he sometimes autographs pictures "Michael, Archbishop of Canterbury...
...most sober of men. In fact, only G. H. Winslow, the College's delightfully tart ex-Bursar, and M. H. L. Gay, the Senior Fellow, retain any of their Snow-given characteristics; and their function is minor and wholly comic. The other figures are inadequately drawn and only sketchily donnish...
This speciously reasoned finale mars, but does not mangle The Affair. Impeccably performed, it pungently evokes its donnish milieu and nobly invokes man's tireless quest to make justice prevail...