And through those vastly sophisticated lenses I imagined Niña Gorda absorbing all the intricate topography of this new land: devouring, with every wing stroke, mapfuls of precisely delineated terrain.

We show an individual's pivotability is a weakly increasing function of his rank.

[…] then lay over these sticks, either a clean old blanket, or, if that be not at hand, a quantity of the swinglings of flax […]

And in truth it had been Mary's money that had kept them all for so long – the house in Holland Park, her father's gangsterly lifestyle . . . Not that she could tell Julia any of this.