“Mr Wooster?” “Oh, hullo, Lady Wickham.” … “Hullo, Bobbie,” I said. “Hullo, Bertie,” she said. “Hullo, Upjohn,” I said. The correct response to this would have been “Hullo, Wooster”, but he blew up in his lines and merely made a noise like a wolf with its big toe caught in a trap. … But as I approached the [telephone] and unhooked the thing you unhook, I was far from being at my most nonchalant, and when I heard Upjohn are-you-there-ing at the other end my manly spirit definitely blew a fuse. For I could tell by his voice that he was in the testiest of moods. Not even when conferring with me at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, on the occasion when I put sherbet in the ink, had I sensed in him a more marked stirred-up-ness. “Hullo? Hullo? Hullo? Are you there? Will you kindly answer me? This is Mr Upjohn speaking.”

The broad pennant of a commodore first class has been in abeyance since 1958, together with the rank.

India is run by gerontocrats and epigones: grey hairs and groomed heirs.

There is no better method, beside retouching upon mediumized films than using a hard shellac varnish, and rubbing over the solution of resin in turpentine, mentioned in the chapter on Materials.