I know it’s sort of unfair to get hung on single sentences, but I can’t help it. So here’s some more quality journalism for you to enjoy. All of them are courtesy of The Sunday Times Magazine, Feb 16 2003.

First a story about a ”great art collector” Arthur Acton, whose wife presumably did something, too. Well… Hortense was best known for the excellent martini cocktails she served after afternoon tea (p. 40). I guess it’s better to be remembered somehow than not at all.

Then, in the same story, Mr. Acton’s son demonstrates how life isn’t just roses: Harold often grumbled about the pressure of royal visits (p. 43). Doesn’t everybody feel that once in a while?

Moving on from upper-class gits to reporter’s arrogance. In a story about mail order wives, reporter Lauren St John displays her razor-shard people skills when describing one of her interviewees: A radiantly fit but otherwise unremarkable 46-year-old (p. 60). And there’s more! A moment later there’s this peculiar sentence: He thought she was gorgeous, she thought he was ”fantastic”. Please tell me why only one of the adjectives has been surrounded by quotation marks.