Sublime

And Lord Randolph’s elder brother was, in the words of an eminent modern historian, ‘one of the most disreputable men ever to have debased the highest rank in the British peerage’.1 He appropriately bore the name of Blandford, the title of the Marlborough heir, for most of his relatively short life, during which he was expelled from Eton, got

‘You’re our longest-serving contributor,’ said Carleton, flinching at the bang. ‘Our most admired. Indeed I should say our most popular.’ I’m beginning to speak like him, he thought: Thomas Hart is catching, that’s the trouble. ‘I’ve often heard it said that it’s a consolation – that’s the general feeling, as I said to the board – to wake on

Briefly Carleton considered the other man, of whom he’d made such a study he might have been appointed professor of Thomas Studies at the University of Essex. He knew, for example, that Thomas was a confirmed bachelor, as they say, never seen in the company of a beautiful young person or a stately older one; that he had about him the melancholy

Nothing went in print for a politician unless it was iron-clad.

It might make things easier if he went down to London again and found Marlowe. Report in, like a good soldier. But he swore he wouldn’t work for Marlowe again. Not after Malaya.

“I don’t consider niggers in the same light as I would a white man,”

THEO METCALFE SOON proved himself one of the most enthusiastic bounty hunters and hangmen. His desire for revenge seems to have continually grown ever since he reached the British camp at the end of his wanderings; and by October he even went so far as to erect a gallows in Metcalfe House.

John Middleton, Lancaster’s second in command,