Word: popinjay
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...forget about his juggling act long enough to give an entertaining lecture on politics, language, sex or music. (Henry much prefers the Supremes and Herman's Hermits to "this female vocalist person .. . called Callas in a sort of foreign musical with no dancing.") Henry could be an intellectual popinjay or, worse, a nag. But through the frail magnificence of Roger Rees, last seen heading the R.S.C.'s Nicholas Nickleby, Henry becomes compassionate, troubled, ardent-the best of the rest of us, and the real thing...
...nothing else). For more than half a century that is how it has been, too, with Hector Hugh Munro, the marvelous miniaturist who wrote under the name of Saki. His voices, silly and silky and sometimes tinged with savagery, were familiar and extravagantly praised. One belonged to a popinjay character called Reginald, who discoursed in a series of semiprecious mots: "I hate posterity. It's so fond of having the last word." Another was Clovis Sangrail, a young man much given to the kind of "gorgeous hoax" that might scandalize a dull house party. Last came Comus Bassington...