blue

Within a year of the battle at Chester, whether or not Æðelfrið’s campaign had been directed at Edwin or at those who would shelter him, the exiled prince left, or was encouraged to leave, the protection of his British sponsors and seek sanctuary with a king whom he must have believed lay beyond Æðelfrið’s reach. Rædwald, he of the Sutton Hoo ship

It’s your job. I know you want to lie on your bed and watch TV, but you have to take care of your career whether you feel like it or not. It’s like a pet.

‘You’re okay with Amos and Lily, right?’ Elena says, pointing. ‘Neither of them knows the other guests, and we were at their wedding so we had to invite them. But I’ve got a special table for people who had kids and regret it – if you want, I could put them there and give them a miserable time.’

‘No guarantees, but usually flowers have an odd number of petals. That’s why you start with He loves me, right? Whatever you begin with, that’s probably the answer you’ll get in the end.’

‘I have something to tell you about our cousin, Mr Ladislaw, which I think will heighten your opinion of him,’ said Dorothea to her husband in the course of the evening. She had mentioned immediately on his entering that Will had just gone away, and would come again, but Mr Casaubon had said, ‘I met him outside, and we made our final adieux, I

Gore Vidal called Samantha a “hooker” in the pages of The Atlantic, in the voice of the purest most cynical cronyism: “Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels she’s been taken advantage of?” At any rate, there’s a chance that she knew she had some power, some sexual pull. And in just a year, I would know too. The next year

No, I had gone into exactly the right business. High pay, huge stress, followed by months of complete nothingness. All you had to be was clever, morally flexible, unmemorable, unthreatening, a fucking invisible man. A perfect fit.

June didn’t believe the rumour. Miss Clarvoe locked things up because she was the kind of person who always locked things up whether they were valuable or not.

And Ma and I—what if months later we sit here and watch a dusty vehicle climb the hill, bouncing a sack of meat in the back seat that was once you? What if…” But she couldn’t go on giving name to her terrors. Instead, she said, “If you go, know that we as we are now will be gone forever.” He shuddered. “We were gone when she was gone. We were