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Literary Quotes: The Home Front
From
Persuasion
by Jane Austen, 1818 |
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Anne
and Henrietta, finding themselves the earliest of the party the
next morning, agreed to stroll down to the sea before breakfast.
- They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide,
which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the
grandeur which so flat a shore admitted. They praised the morning;
gloried in the sea; sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling
breeze - and were silent; til Henrietta suddenly began again,
with,
"Oh! yes - I am quite convinced that, with very few exceptions,
the sea-air always does good. There can be no doubt of it having
been of the greatest service to Dr Shirley, after his illness,
last spring twelvemonth..."
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From
If the Invader Comes
by Derek Beaven, pub. Fourth Estate 2001 |
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He
stowed the pills and sick bag in one of his innumerable fastenings
and looked around him. His fellows, squashed en masse, wearing
their tin hats and Mae Wests, took up every inch of floor space.
A few were standing, smoking or drinking tea. Most were seated,
resting against their equipment, gambling, talking, writing letters.
Rifles and entrenching tools bristled amid the throng. At the
far end of the hold the rations were packed; beside them, bizarrely,
were the bicycles. Here, moored up in the midst of a fleet of
similar craft at Southampton Docks, Vic felt he had more or less
arrived at the end of the line.
...
But it was clear within the next five minutes that they were heading
down the Solent in force and that the event they had spent the
last three years preparing for was finally underway. Vic peered
above the steel bulwark at the black, feathered water. Going to
be a sea and a half out there, he thought.
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