Volume 54, Number 14 · September 27, 2007
A Very Satisfied Survivor
By Edmund S. Morgan, Marie Morgan
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
by Linda Colley
Pantheon, 363 pp., $27.50
In John Boorman's charming movie Hope and Glory (1987), young Billy Rohan is carrying on being British in spite of the Blitz, with barrage balloons overhead and a gas mask tucked beneath his school desk. Pointing out 'the pink bits' on the world map, his teacher grandiosely catechizes the students on the reach of the British Empire. 'What fraction of the earth's surface is British?' she barks. When Jennifer, the clever girl, correctly volunteers 'two fifths,' Mrs. Evans declaims, 'Two fifths, ours.... Men are fighting and dying to save all the pink bits for you ungrateful little twerps!'
Review, 3968 words
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