Word: hooke
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Waugh has waved his magic wand of characterization -mediocrity seems not only a human condition but a fascinating one. The only trouble with it is that it is incapable of leading a Crusade-a job which Waugh turns over to one of his most scintillating creations, Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook...
...Warrior. Ritchie-Hook is anything but a saint. Like many a Crusader, he fights simply because he loves "blood and gunpowder." Hand-to-hand scrapping is his ideal: "Everything else [in war]," he assures Guy, "is just bumf and telephones." His pursuit of his ideal has left him with "a single, terrible.eye . . . black as the patch which hung on the other side of the lean, skew nose." His smile is a grim baring of carnivorous teeth; he grasps his cocktail glass in "a black claw" consisting of "two surviving fingers and half a thumb." He is fond of discoursing...
Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, brute symbol of ferocity and military leadership, stands at one extreme of Men at Arms. At the other is Captain Apthorpe, who stands for all that is most ridiculous, most pompous, most bumbling and yet most sympathetic in human nature. He has spent most of his life in Bechuanaland, and he joins the Halberdiers with a "vast accumulation of ant-proof boxes, waterproof bundles, strangely shaped, heavily initialed tin trunks and leather cases." As an antiseptic precaution he has his "Thunder Box"-a portable chemical toilet built of oak and brass...
...blinds with his hands empty on the counterpane," that the reader grasps the true nature of Waugh's creation. Captain Apthorpe is Shakespeare's Falstaff, perfectly brought up-to-date, but with his roots set firmly in the historic past. And it is Brigadier Ritchie-Hook who drives him to his death, much as King Henry V impatiently rid his army of "that stuff'd cloakbag of guts...
...breathless moments it looked as though Jersey Joe Walcott might finish off Rocky Marciano in the first round. With unexpected boldness, the heavyweight champion moved right in on Challenger Rocky, battered his jaw with short, hard lefts and rights, then tagged him with a left hook. The spectators at Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium let out a roar of excitement and surprise as Rocky went down, for the first time in 43 pro fights...