Word: pukka
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...between the lines, Donleavy's diatribes manage to say more. In passing fancies he sees visions of grace, chivalry and order. Lords sit in their castles while peasants roam the meadow (with a moat between them). Butlers who know their place well serve perfectly prepared drinks to deserving pukka-sahib colonels. At such tenderly sardonic moments, Donleavy seems to reveal himself as an inverted romantic, profoundly sad beneath his disguise because he and the world are no better than they happen...
What I like best are the book's biographies. Gems, every jack of them. Zircons, actually. George Washington in four pages. Lincoln in three. Even in the U.S., Burke 's retains its pukka airs. Calls Nixon "controversial." L.B.J.'s the chap who had "a large stock of folk tales - not all of them appropriate for a polite audience." Gerald Ford is the one who was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. Only King in the book. Pity...
Considering the thudding banalities they are forced to utter, the actors man age a lively display of cocktail-party intelligence. Deborah Kerr is very pukka memsahib, and Barry Nelson displays his boyish charm, though the patina of age has begun to dull it. Frank Langella turns out to be the drollest character onstage with his stubborn macho pride in the size of his tail...
...satirical postures and caricature voices, "Carruthers" plays bishop to "Bradshaw's" priest, pukka sahib to his native, officer to his enlisted man, and schoolmaster to his pupil. The bantering wit of this role playing does not entirely disguise its hidden psychological vengeance. In these games, it is Perew who dominates and Lacey who is dependent and vulnerable...
...fairness to Abrahams and Stansky, they don't dwell unduly on this marvelous transformation from Blair the pukka sahib to Orwell the socialist. Instead, they dwell on Eric Blair, and in the process do a bit of good social history. To describe the Indian Imperial Police they are forced to rely heavily on men who were Blair's contemporaries in it, who by and large remained imperialists, while Blair resigned. No one reads literary biography for information on the British Empire in its late decadence. But plenty of people interested in Orwell are also interested in the atmosphere of British...