A TALENT TO ANNOY:
Essays, Journalism and Reviews
1929-1968,
edited by Charlotte Mosley
Date of First Publication: 1986
‘To me Marie Antoinette is one of the most irritating characters in history. She was frivolous without being funny, extravagant without being elegant, her stupidity was monumental; she was one of those people who cannot put a foot right.’
‘Elegance in England is of such different stuff from any other country that it is not easy to make foreigners believe in it at all. (As regards the women, that is, English men and small children are universally admitted to be the model of good dressing; our Queen and Princess Margaret set the fashion for the world until they were ten.) It is based on a contempt of the current mode and a limitless self assurance.’