All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place.

Noght vēter noght haue spare to speke spare to spede Nothing venture, nothing have; spare to speak, spare success

Some people console themselves with the thought that, basically, worse things happen at sea: in middle-class Britain today, particularly familied fortysomethings, it’s Chicken-Licken time.

As the gunman spluttered, Towler continued the momentum of his hand to catch the man side-handed in the windpipe and, with his other hand, struck him hard in the crotch.