Word: sahibs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some of the biggest names in British exports are double-barreled: Rolls-Royce, Mini-Minor, Terry-Thomas. Even without the hyphen, the actor's face would probably have made his name familiar the world over. Its features are a bounderish British blend of sad sack and pukka sahib: busby brows that shoot up in startled innocence or beetle down with Mac the Knife malevolence; lugubrious eyes rocketing around like apoplectic billiard balls; a Scotch-sodden thatch of mustache, and, of course, those two front teeth, gaping wide as Becher's Brook. Wherever he takes a stroll, from Soho...
...Malaya and Singapore today, a mem-sahib is more apt to spend her day screaming at the amah, doing the housework herself, or else trying to poach the perfect gem who works for the Arbuthnots. For the old-style amahs, whose white tunics, black silk pajama trousers and smoothly braided hair made them look like pigtailed penguins, belong to a dying race...
...personal trip out East during a long leave from his business-do not seem to be triggered by any Blimpish nostalgia for the good old days. In recollection, his early existence as the only son of the British adviser to a maharaja of the 19203 is outwardly pure pukka sahib, inwardly the struggle of a lonely boy to live up to what he thought was expected...
Likable Enemies. An amiable blend of Colonel Blimp, Pukka Sahib and strategic genius, onetime Schoolmaster "Uncle Bill" Slim rose from the ranks to officer status during World War I. One of his first commands, as he recalls it with humor and affection in Unofficial History, was as head of two companies of infantry, pursuing the rear guard of a Turkish army across the Tigris River...
Rattigan and Mills thus create an absorbing Theory of Lawrence, but the play sometimes slithers toward schoolboy romantics and when-empire-was-in-flower nostalgia. No amount of skilled acting can wholly conceal that General Allenby (John Williams) is a stock pukka sahib, that the commander at Deraa (Geoffrey Keen) is a stock sweaty Turkish dog of a villain, and that Auda Abu Tayi (Paul Sparer) is a stock native chief, corrupt but endearing...