Balmoral Kill Quotes

“death, the greatest enemy, would put in an appearance today. Now that he was here he was sure of it. Death seemed to be holding so many souls in the balance of his reaping hand.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“those old women at Westminster”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Wentworth, get your boys to round up everyone under suspicion. Discreetly, though. We don’t want questions asked by those old women at Westminster until we have a few answers to throw back at them.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“One of the finest snipers that ever graced the mud of the Western Front.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Mrs Marsh looked immobile, Lovat thought, as though she never left the chair let alone the house. Better to be dead, he considered, than to live her life. He and Edwin stood in the middle of the tiny room. They had to. There were no other chairs. They had had to wait a moment or two for their eyes to get used to the dark. The window was too small and grimy to admit very much light. A pathetic fire smoked in the grate. Mrs Marsh puffed on a cigarette, knocking the ash every now and again into an ashtray on the arm of the chair. A near empty bottle of gin stood on the floor at her feet. There was no glass.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Duties had kept him in London. A place he increasingly detested. A mood that may have come with age, for he had loved the city when he was young, in those last golden days of Victoria’s reign. The world had seemed so sure.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Are you a Bolshevik?’ ‘More an anarchist, I like to think. Anyway, I’m quite determined to bring down the settled order of British Society. Once I’ve dealt with Franco and Hitler that is.’ She stood. ‘Perhaps we’d better go in and have tea before you start the revolution.’ Miller clambered to his feet. ‘Ah, in this country even the revolution stops for tea,’ he said.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“she would freeze and be no help when the danger came. These street girls were never as tough as they made out.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“I’ll tell you something about that war, Billy. With great respect to all the men who died. I don’t think it was worth the fighting. Too many good men perished. For what? Is the world a better place for their sacrifice? You know what’s going on in Spain and Germany. Has anyone really learned the lessons? It was supposed to be the war to end wars. Do you see any sign of that?”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Lovat thinks you can just hide someone in a place like the Commercial Road. You can’t! It might be part of one of the busiest cities on earth, but at heart the East End is just a village. Too small to hide out in.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Lovat liked and detested London at the same time. He loathed the poverty that was all around and hated the smug indifference towards it from so many of the people he had to work with. He thought of Mrs Litvinov, a woman without two brass tacks to rub together, but more capacity for kindness than anyone very much in Whitehall.  Mrs Litvinov and her kind ought to run the country, he thought. And what a better country it might be.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Lovat liked and detested London at the same time.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“As the two women sobbed, Lovat felt a real hatred for the men behind this. Not just Johnson’s killers, but everyone involved in the whole bloody mess. Stinking politicians and army officers who had the world at their feet but were never satisfied. Men who couldn’t let their ambitions rest, but always wanted more.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“Pulling down his hat he lingered on the street corner, melting back against a grimy wall of London brick.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“he turned into Aldgate, a locality that seemed to have little to do with the machinations of constantly irritating Whitehall mandarins.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“So what do you do when you’re not working?’ ‘I read books, a lot of books. I have a cottage in Twickenham, right by the river. It’s a small cottage, and the books take up a greater part of it. My wife and I are great readers.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller

“He looked up at the great grey peaks, some still topped by the remnants of the winter snow. He felt as close to happy as he ever got, the fittest he had been for a long time. His mind clear. Being in the mountains made him happy. He loved mountains. They were so much less trouble than people.”
― John Bainbridge, Balmoral Kill: A 1930s Spy Thriller