Richard Vernon: Oldenshaw

Quotes 

• Imlac Defraits : It *has* been invented, by the Americans; I was reading about it in the "New York Times".

  Oldenshaw : Wishful thinking by the popular press.

  Imlac Defraits : If you imagine the "New York Times" to be the popular press...

  Oldenshaw : It's enormously popular. Every disenchanted intellectual in England reads it.

• Imlac Defraits : Would a child organise property deals, develop a revolutionary weapon?

  Oldenshaw : Mozart wrote his first symphony at five, Milton's Latin and Greek - and Hebrew - are perfect today; there are plenty of precedents for precocious children. It's only modern psychology and free milk that hold 'em back.

• Imlac Defraits : [Waves set of photographs]  Isn't the point to find the person who passed the Chinese these?

  Oldenshaw : Is that a joke?

  Imlac Defraits : What?

  Oldenshaw : "Chinese these".

  Imlac Defraits : Not for me, but if you find it amusing, I mean...

  [waves hand airily] 

• Imlac Defraits : What a curious voice that woman had.

  Oldenshaw : Too much gin, probably.

• Oldenshaw : The trouble with modern education, Imlac, is that it caters chiefly for the unintelligent.

• Hubert Hatton : If you can make that shed light on our problems, you're a better man than I am.

  Oldenshaw : I must say I'd always hoped I was.