He enjoys that perfect peace, that peace beyond all understanding, which comes to its maximum only to the man who has given up golf.

She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. She's a drooper.

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.

I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.

Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.

Hugo?’ ‘Millicent?’ ‘Is that you?’ ‘Yes. Is that you?’ ‘Yes.’ Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.

He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the consommé, and the dinner-gong due any moment.