M.J. Carter > Quotes

“For mile after mile the strangler vines choked the sal trees, one grey trunk encircling another, until the whole jungle resembled some terrible tangled knot in which it was impossible to tell murderer from victim.”
― M.J. Carter, The Strangler Vine

“Would you rather be hungry or dead?”
― M.J. Carter, The Devil's Feast

“To paraphrase Montaigne—even when you’re sitting on the highest throne in the world, you’re still sitting on your arse.”
― M.J. Carter, The Strangler Vine

“Wilhelm manifested many symptoms of “narcissistic personality disorder”: arrogance, grandiose self-importance, a mammoth sense of entitlement, fantasies about unlimited success and power; a belief in his own uniqueness and brilliance; a need for endless admiration and reinforcement and a hatred of criticism; proneness to envy; a tendency to regard other people as purely instrumental—in terms of what they could do for him, along with a dispiriting lack of empathy.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“For decades, chalk and alum have been added to bread, and burnt corn and peas ground up to make coffee. Vinegar is rendered sharper by the addition of sulphuric acid, arrowroot is added to milk to thicken it, mustard is eked out with flour, strychnine is added to beer for bitterness and green vitriol to encourage a foaming head. And these are but the harmless manipulations.”
― M.J. Carter, The Devil's Feast

“He came from the tiny group of very grand aristocratic families who, as one of Bertie’s cleverer mistresses observed, “believed they26 had the prescriptive right to rule England in the same way as they ruled their estates.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“Don’t threaten me, you piece of filth.”
― M.J. Carter, The Strangler Vine

“Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.”
― M.J. Carter, The Strangler Vine

“Just how hair-triggerishly anxious George was would be well illustrated a few months later, in July 1917, when he became so upset about insinuations that the royal family might not be entirely loyal because of their German names and antecedents that he changed the family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the entirely made-up Windsor.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“The plan was typical of the way the German officer corps had come to see strategic problems in a vacuum, entirely from their narrow viewpoint, and without recourse to the nuances of diplomacy or the needs of politics.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“Haig and his colleague General Robertson’s commitment to trench warfare—in the belief that conscripted soldiers were too untrained to do anything other than stand in a line and walk forward—had a devastating effect on the casualty lists.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“I have it on good authority- well, I have it on distinctly disreputable but probably truthful authority- that his enterprises are perfectly well known to the local new police.”
― M.J. Carter, The Infidel Stain

“Erichsen, who admitted he was breaching medical etiquette but felt “the circumstances were so104 serious that they justified the breach,” had concluded that Wilhelm would never be “normal.” He would be subject to “sudden accesses of anger,” during which time he would be “incapable of forming a reasonable or temperate judgement on the subject under consideration,” and while “it was not probable that he would actually become insane, some of his actions would probably be those of a man not wholly sane.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little. You've done well, and honourably.”
― M.J. Carter

“He is a nice-looking33 young man, but she one of the least attractive of girls, coarse-featured, with an ill-tempered mouth and a certain German vulgarity, which will be terrible at 35.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“We fought for equality for all, for women too. For freethinking, fighting the lies of church and state, for what Nat called the Republic of Letters. That was what we believed in twenty years ago. But now, seems like all that has gone. It’s church and Sunday best, and votes for men.” “What”
― M.J. Carter, The Infidel Stain

“Even his moustache—teased into the shape of a wide up-thrusting “w”—was so famous it acquired a name: Er ist erreicht! “It is achieved!” Manipulated through the miracle of pomade—its key ingredient the remarkable new product, petroleum jelly—it was the very model of a modern moustache, a controlled riposte to the great bushy, biblical patriarch beards and side-whiskers of the previous generation.*”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“His insistence that his government deal only with the Right had made it a hostage to nationalist interest groups and alienated the rest of the country. His embracing and encouragement of a public rhetoric which bristled with violence, racial stereotyping and threats had helped to bolster an image abroad of a nation hungering for conflict.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“A conservative in the purest sense, he’d entered politics to defend the ruling propertied classes from the ravages of democracy and an expanding franchise. For him, the upper classes represented the best of human endeavour—birth, intelligence and culture—and they deserved to rule; inherited wealth, he believed, made a man less prone to corruption.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“Good heavens!” I said. “Strychnine and vitriol in beer?”

“And in gin too. Enough to impart hallucinations and a nasty disruption of the bowels. And I have seen far worse: indianberry – very toxic – added to beer to make it more intoxicating. Custard flavoured with laurel – a mortal poison; pepper made from floor sweepings, comfits from china clay. Double Gloucester cheese coloured with red lead. Lead, copper, mercury, arsenic – deadly, all – they are everywhere. I myself can attest that lead salts taste quite delicious.”
― M.J. Carter, The Devil's Feast

“I am an utter unbeliever that anything that is violent will have permanent results.”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

“The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little. You’ve done well, and honorably.”
― M.J. Carter, The Strangler Vine

“German aggression tended to backfire,”
― M.J. Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I