One can love these moments, can cherish their invocation of the American sublime (though Wright's notion of the sublime seems closer to the lurid paintings of Bierstadt than to Whitman), and yet dislike the cracker-barrel philosophizing in which they're embedded.

A rounded history of the periods, before, during and after the Second World War, will shed additional light on Swadesh, and on a series of complex interplayings of personality […]

However, something once happened on the railway there which showed the very best of mankind: heroism, duty, self-sacrifice and calm professionalism under terrible pressure. It is a story which gives us far, far better reasons for remembering this attractive little town, which without these heroes would have been blown to smithereens in a gigantic explosion. (Two railwaymen lost their lives in 1944 when a wagon in an ammunition train caught fire and blew up, an even worse disaster was averted however.)

He was so drunk that the police banged him up for the night.