Margaret Halsey
Margaret Halsey
Margaret Halseywas an American writer who lived in the United Kingdom for a short time. Her first book With Malice Towards Somegrew out of her experiences there. It was a witty and humorous bestseller, selling 600,000 copies. It won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
father sleep vacuums
Father's snoring grows to sound increasingly like a vacuum cleaner in heat.
produce proof ennui
... it takes a great deal to produce ennui in an Englishman and if you do, he only takes it as convincing proof that you are well-bred.
long wonder surprise
I was well warned about English food, so it did not surprise me, but I do wonder sometimes, how they ever manage to prise it up long enough to get a plate under it.
communication perfection tides
We know of our own knowledge that we are human beings, and, as such, imperfect. But we are bathed by the communications industry in a ceaseless tide of inhuman, impossible perfection.
patterns liquor employed
Employed as I had been employing it, liquor is a fixative of old patterns ...
insulting dinner faces
The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner.
attitude english-history insulting
The attitude of the English towards English history reminds one a good deal of the attitude of a Hollywood director towards love.
drinking flocks spokes
when I spoke of having a drink, it was a euphemism for having a whole flock of them.
white anxiety fifty
I would have felt more comfortable on a girder fifty floors above the street, catching white-hot rivets in a pail.
democracy demand suspension
Democracy makes many taxing demands on its practitioners, but suspension of the intelligence is not one of them.
doctors people drs
people coming away from a session with Dr. S. usually looked as if they had had fifty minutes on the anvil with an apprentice blacksmith.
fire hot nerves
I was so embarrassed I could feel my nerves curling like bacon over a hot fire.
oxford mind visitors
From a purely tourist standpoint, Oxford is overpowering, being so replete with architecture and history and anecdote that the visitor's mind feels dribbling and helpless, as with an over-large mouthful of nougat.
shoes looks england
Englishwomen's shoes look as if they had been made by someone who had often heard shoes described, but had never seen any ...