Editors From England

"The Great Parterre at , planted by , was abolished by , a priceless piece of history lost."

"Wherever she went, Vita collected seeds and roots and s, and always travelled with a and a few potatoes into which she would put cuttings to keep them moist and fresh."

"Her second marriage was to the war correspondent and broadcaster , with whom she had a son and a daughter. He liked sport and shooting, while she preferred the arts and literature. Hastings was very rightwing, she liberal in the tradition of . They had a tremendous row over , which she considered an act of barbarism, while he saw as a hero. His remark that "I've got the three things I wanted most, a Churchill gun, a and a beautiful wife" did not go down at all well. She strongly resented "being counted as a chattel with a gun and a rod". When divorce inevitably came, she said they had never shared a close relationship."

"Florists' flowers, especially s and tulips, were already popular in the , and a book on the subject, The Florist's Vade Mecum, by the Rev. , son-in-law of the great gardener and gardening writer, , was published on 1683."

"I imagine that there are to-day no three names better known in our country than those of , , and , and this for the reason that they are connected with the intimate details of our lives! It was they who ordained we should or should not have bacon for our breakfast or for our . When husbands grumbled wives made a whipping-boy of the , and I have heard the demand of a child for jam dismissed with the words: "There ain't none, and if you're not a good boy I'll ask Lord Rhondda never to let you have no more neither.""

"There are so many interesting Brazilian writers I’d like to get my hands on. The ' Best Young Brazilian Novelists a few years back identified twenty writers aged under forty, and there’s a lot there still waiting for the to welcome them in. For that collection, I translated short work by two of those writers, and , both of whom deserve full English-language books; there’s another on that list, , who’s bound to be discovered by the English-speaking world before long. And there are a lot of Brazilian writers I have already translated but of whom I’d like to do a lot more — I’ve done one extraordinary short novel by and would love to do a second, I’d like to do more , too, and so many others…"

"Once you’ve agreed what makes a in the first place (which isn’t as easy as one might think…), I think the basic measures of quality for children’s fiction are the same as for adult fiction. How well ted, how well imagined, the commitment to a voice and the skill in realizing it, the aliveness of the s, the vividness of the world, the originality and wit and surprise and charm and everything else that demanding readers look for in great writing. Books for younger children tend to be heavily illustrated, in a way that most adult books aren’t (more’s the pity…), a fact that of course brings with it a whole other set of ways in which a book can succeed or fail. (The illustrations and their relationship to the text aren’t, of course, minor factors incidental to the substance of the book, they are among the hardest things to get perfectly right.)"

"In the first thirteen years of the food was cheap and plentiful, ... and the development of and which had come about in the latter part of the nineteenth century permitted a great variety of fare. But, in spite of this plenty, inquiry showed that for the most part the lower-paid workers were then considerably under-nourished, the better-paid just sufficiently nourished and the upper classes over-nourished. Though low wages explained to a great extent the under-nourishment, lack of knowledge of what to buy and how to cook it was, as it still is, responsible for some of the malnutrition both of the rich and of the poor."

"has a , and deserves it. But while she doesn’t need any recognition from me, I’ve just given the team behind her book a prize: the £2,000 . Why? Well, I thought was stunning. But my Russian is terrible, so I only read it in 2016, when it was published in English, through the work of translator Bela Shayevich and editor Jacques Testard. Nobody is likely ever to give the literature Nobel to a translator or editor – so my prize has gone to them. One of our shortlisted books, ', was the first work of modern published in the UK. In 2017, working with the and with support from the , I established the TA first translation prize, using my €25,000 (£22,000) winnings from another award, the . Its aim was to highlight the work of translators new to the profession, and of the editors who work with them. Literary translation is a difficult profession to break into. Plenty of people want to do it, but in the insular , there’s regrettably little work to go around, and it’s easier for publishers to entrust their books to already-known translators who are seen as less of a risk."

"It is the habit of s to pick fruit, vegetables, etc., in the morning, and to bring in the day's supply at about eleven o'clock, and on Saturday to provide sufficient for two days' consumption. Except in the case of strawberries (which should be gathered, if possible, on the day on which they are to be eaten) and asparagus (which is infinitely better when cut just before the time for cooking), there is no objection to this plan, provided the garden produce is stored in the best manner. Carrots and turnips, s and onions, should be placed in wire racks; and s should be arranged root-end downmost in a shallow pan of fresh water. s and cauliflower may be treated likewise. should be placed in water as if it were a flower—not soused head over heels in that liquid."

"Chocolate Cake ¼ lb. chocolate grated 3 oz. flour. and melted in a basin 2 eggs. in the oven. 4 drops vanilla essence. 3 oz. butter. 1 teaspoonful baking ¼ lb. castor sugar. powder. Beat the butter, chocolate and sugar to a cream, add the vanilla. Beat the eggs and add the flour and baking powder and whip well for 5 minutes. Bake in a moderate oven in a buttered tin for an hour."

"After all, they are only going into their own back garden."

"What is my message? That is what troubles me. I have not got a message. I am not by any means so ardent a Radical or as ardent in anything as I was. I have read so many newspapers on both sides that my old views have become so greatly modified that I no longer feel certain of anything. That is too strong, but it is true to a certain extent. Facts and existing circumstances prevent me being so enthusiastic as some are about remodelling the Universe."

"What a marvellous opportunity for attacking the devil!"

"No journalist is omnipotent, and even the most powerful journalist cannot influence those who do not read his paper. But within the range of his circulation — and readers, of course, are much more numerous than subscribers — he may be more potent than any other man. The damnable iteration day after day of earnest conviction wears like the dropping of water upon the stone."

"The duty of a journalist is the duty of a watchman."

"The Press is at once the eye and the ear and the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech if not the voice of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world."

"It is the great inspector, with a myriad eyes, who never sleeps, and whose daily reports are submitted, not to a functionary or department, but to the whole people."

"An editor is the uncrowned king of an educated democracy."

"Man's interest in consuming , as well as in using their feathers for warmth and their fat for lighting and heating, was behind their early domestication. Two goose species were involved, the and the , and two ducks, the and the . Features of all wildfowl domestication include large size, a reduced number of tail and wing feathers, flightlessness, rapid maturation, an increased clutch size, long breeding season, loss of 'broodiness' (so that the technique of artificial incubation becomes necessary at an early stage), loss of aggression, a polygamous mating system, and the laying down of abdominal fat."

"Kear was instrumental in efforts to save the — from extinction. Over-exploitation and the introduction of the predatory to the had reduced an estimated 18th-century population of 25,000 to less than 30 by 1949. Three birds taken into captivity and sent to the WWT's , , headquarters formed the basis of a captive breeding programme. Thus were 200 reintroduced to Hawaii by the WWT during the 1960s, and more than 2,200 by the early 1990s. In the late 1970s, she moved from Slimbridge to become curator of in the north-west, making her the first woman in charge of a regional centre. She developed it into one of the most important in the WWT chain. It now attracts up to 20,000 and 1,300 s each winter, with large numbers of people enjoying the spectacle."

"The is perhaps the evolutionary link between the , and the . The Mallard has been domesticated for over 2,500 years. the Romans initiated the process in Europe, and the Malays in Asia."

"The collection of down from the nests of s was a common practice among Eskimos and, in Iceland, the wild Eider Duck is farmed. In the early 1960s there were about 200 Eider farms in Iceland holding some 250,000 nesting females, each producing an average of 19 g. of cleaned down."

"The can readily be distinguisedh from the true wild Swans, the and the , for it arches its neck much more and its bill is reddish orange with a protruding black knob at the base ..."

"Wrens do not appear to indulge to any great extent, though they appreciate drinking water. It should be remembered that if birds have plenty to drink in summer they are less likely to make attacks on fruit."

"At the time the was formed the main interest in birds lay in whether they or their eggs were good to eat, or in their possibilities as a source of amusement at which to blaze off a gun."

"Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen, To make me own this hind of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of men."

"He went about his work — such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand — As one who knows, where there’s a task to do, Man’s honest will must Heaven’s good grace command."

"You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who, with mocking pencil, wont to trace, Broad for self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face."

"How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true."

"Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal – you sockdologizing old man-trap!"

"The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, Utter one voice of sympathy and shame! Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high, Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came."

"The season of the rose is brief, make haste to pluck your posies; Another day you’ll chance to find bare thorns where bloomed the roses."

"Though not a few of the poems in the present volume could not be included in anthologies intended for general circulation, I must yet be allowed to state that I have reprinted nothing that is offensively gross. There is a great deal of dirt — nasty worthless trash — in the miscellanies of the Restoration, and with this garbage I have not chosen to meddle."

"The joint work with from that research group, ' ..., is now seen as creating a new strand. The extant philosophy of science thought about s in relation to theory: models were ways of capturing the essence of a theory. What we were doing in that little research group – and what we did in the volume Models as Mediators – was to say, if you look at the way science is practised, you see that scientists treat models as autonomous objects on which they develop arguments. They manipulate them, argue with them, extend them. Models are not in a simple relationship between theory and the world, rather they are at angles to both, so you can use them to interrogate both sides. Models as Mediators is 20 years old, and you can definitely see now that the project as a whole changed the conversation in the philosophy of science about models. I don’t mean that everybody was convinced by it, but it created a big enough presence so that, even if you didn’t agree with it, you had to take it into account. This work was part of a wider move that has been happening toward ‘the philosophy of science in practice’."

"Of importance for the is that , in both his cycle books, had concentrated his energies on the statistical evidence of the economic interactions involved in the business cycle and the of these relationships rather than on the relation between the economic cycle and the exogenous causal factor. Moore's concern with evidence end statistical explanation compared to that of Jevons, and the matching change in contemporaries' responses, are both indicative of the development of the econometric approach by the early years of the twentieth century. Yet, it was some years before Moore's broad econometric approach to the explanation of economic cycles, involving a large number relationships linking different parts of the economy, was taken up by who produced the first macro econometric models in the late 1930s."

"From the late nineteenth century, economics gradually became a more technocratic, tool-based, science, using mathematics and statistics embedded in various kinds of analytical techniques. ... By the late twentieth century, economics had become heavily dependent on a set of reasoning tools that economists now call 's': small mathematical, statistical, graphical, diagrammatic, and even physical objects that can be manipulated in various different ways. Today, in the twenty-first century, if we go to an economics seminar, or read a learned scientific paper in that field, we find that economists write down some equations or maybe draw a diagram, and use those to develop solutions to their theoretical conundrums or to answer questions about the economic world."

"By about 1900 BC, successive invaders, notably from Spain, were ousting Stone Age rulers and bringing Britain into the Mediterranean trade orbit. Sophisticated engineers erected , the , the 20,000 s and smaller stone circles signalling to a sky thick with gods."

"War was justified, especially if the foe was weakly armed, and, preferably, coloured. Beautiful women asserted themselves through romantic bitchiness (which left men very stricken or very bored), through espionage, leading to sudden death in exotic circumstances, or through hunting: 'Gad, George, she keeps her seat like a man, damme, she does.'"

"Peter Vansittart, who has died aged 88, was a master of the historical novel and a writer of outstanding talent. He wrote more than 40 books, which also encompassed anthologies, works on literature and . As he was the first to concede, the reading public could be slow to enjoy his novels. He put this down to his “obsession with language and speculation at the expense of narrative, however much I relish narrative in others”. Nonetheless, he was admired by critics and fellow authors. To , he was “a master of description”, and to , “a carefully accurate historian [and] a splendidly imaginative writer of fiction”."

"All's fair in love and war."

"You are looking as fresh as paint."

"All done, all fled, and now we faint and tire— The Feast is over and the lamps expire! ... All dim, all pale—so lift me on the pyre— The Feast is over and the lamps expire!"

"The rulers whom we supplanted were, like ourselves, aliens and usurpers. We found the Hindoos a conquered people, and, little by little, we substituted one yoke for another."

"It was horrible, Paul. But it was a bit more complicated than that, wasn't it ? Sex often is"

", so Shakespeare relates, was often at the in , and there was the wonderful meetings of poets—Beaumont, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare himself—at the famous on the south side of ."

"was with at at the time of the in 1813. She went back to at the request of the , who assured her that the position of herself and her children was perfectly safe. The allied kings and statesmen waited on her. She was treated with the utmost deference, but it was she who grieved for in far more than , and before the began, Josephine, shriven and with her children kneeling by her side, died with the name of Bonaparte on her lips. Twenty thousand persons passed the catafalque where the Empress lay in state. Royal honours were hers at her funeral."

"Lawyers have never been popular. It will be remembered that although there is at least one lawyer in most of the Dickens novels, few of them are drawn as attractive personalities."

"... The had its . The had its . ... He drank prodigiously, even for the seventeenth century. He was subject to violent bursts of passion, and he had absolutely no self-control. He was the supreme bully. His greatest joy in life was to denounce, to jeer, and to hurt. And nature had eminently fitted him for the rôle that he had chosen. Jeffreys's one passion was a genuine hatred of and ..."

"It is improbable that Wycliff had much to do personally with the preparation of the , the first version four years afterward. This was the first complete translation of the into English, but it must not be supposed that before Wycliff's time the Scriptures had been altogether out of reach of the simple man with no understanding of Latin. It should be remembered that, in the Middle Ages, every one who could read, could read Latin. Before the era of the printing press translations were not as necessary as they are today."