Rodney Bolt > Quotes

“Arthur published small volumes of verse, and within time he was accepted as an unofficial Poet Laureate to the Court at Windsor, the work of the official incumbent Alfred Austin being so awful that even the Queen and the then Prince of Wales could tell.”
― Rodney Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil, the impossible life of Mary Benson

“Into this well of oestrogen - for weekends, on holiday, to write books - came Ben’s sons, hardly renowned for their excess of testosterone.”
― Rodney Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil, the impossible life of Mary Benson

“Asino tu nascesti, ad asino morrai. [An ass you were born; an ass you will die.]”
― Rodney Bolt, The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte--Mozart's Poet, Casanova's Friend, and Italian Opera's Impre

“Fred had to restrain himself during audiences with King George of Greece from imitating the monarch’s habit - ‘as infectious as yawning’ - of standing with feet close together, rising on to tiptoe and dropping back again. Momentary loss of concentration would mean that king and visitor became locked in a gentle seesaw as they conversed.”
― Rodney Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil, the impossible life of Mary Benson

“Extract from ‘Dodo’ by Fred Benson: -
They sleep like hogs, she said, and they are very cheerful in the morning…It is very plebeian to be cheerful in the morning.”
― Rodney Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil, the impossible life of Mary Benson

“The Bensons were hopelessly literate. The offspring of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, and his wife Mary, formed (said the composer Dame Ethyl Smyth) an ‘unpermissibly gifted family’.”
― Rodney Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil by Rodney Bolt

“On Sunday 11 October 1896, Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, insufferable to the end, died on his knees in church saying the Confession, ending a life of relentless success.”
― Rodney Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil, the impossible life of Mary Benson

“Gruff and more reticent than his sparkling socialite younger brother, Artur was nevertheless charming company, and had inherited Ben’s genius at conversation, ‘keeping the stickiest ball nimbly rolling, with the effect that the rest of the talkers got the encouraging impression that they were in peculiarly good form themselves’.”
― Rodney Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil, the impossible life of Mary Benson