No stiff upper lips, no coal-scuttle jaws, in fact none of the cliches. What the Boultings earlier Desert Victory did for the front line here, this film does for the canteen cowboy and the Whitehall warrior.

Melancholy? Marry gup, is melancholy a word for a barber's mouth? Thou shouldst say, heavy, dull, and doltish. Melancholy is the crest of courtiers' arms, and now every base companion, being in his muble-fubles, says he is melancholy.

There is a general agreement that niggering took over from mummering to keep up the old custom.

One of the family's diversions was singing quodlibets. These what-you-wills were simply stringings together of various melodies […]