Regents Park Quotes

Marcus couldn't believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before. He'd tried to get the highest score on the Stargazer machine in the kabab shop on Hornsey road - nothing. He'd tried to read Nicky's thoughts by staring at the back of his head every maths lesson for a week - nothing. It really annoyed him that the only thing he'd ever achieved through trying was something he hadn't really wanted to do that much in the first place. And anyway, since when did hitting a bird with a sandwich ever kill it? People spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic?

Ah well, so be it. The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent’s Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained — at last! — the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence — the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

Helen opened her eyes and gazed into the luminous blue of the sky. Was it crazy, she wondered, to be as grateful as she felt now, for moments like this, in a world that had atomic bombs in it—and concentration camps, and gas chambers? People were still tearing each other into pieces. There was still murder, starvation, unrest, in Poland, Palestine, India—God knew where else. Britain itself was sliding into bankruptcy and decay. Was it a kind of idiocy or selfishness, to want to be able to give yourself over to the trifles: to the parp of the Regent’s Park Band; to the sun on your face, the prickle of grass beneath your heels, the movement of cloudy beer in your veins, the secret closeness of your lover? Or were those trifles all you had? Oughtn’t you, precisely, to preserve them? To make little crystal drops of them, that you could keep, like charms on a bracelet, to tell against danger when next it came?

Now, in this case, if John Ashley had indeed committed the murder in Regent's Park in the manner suggested by the police, he would have been a criminal in more senses than one, for idiocy of that kind is to my mind worse than many crimes.

Kids must spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic?

Without being able to decipher a word of the placard at the Gate, he had learnt his lesson—in Regent’s Park dogs must be led on chains.

Marcus couldn’t believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before. He'd tried to get te highest score on the Stargazer machine in the kebab shop on Hornsey Road--nothing. He's tried to read Nicky’s thoughts by staring at the back of his head every maths lesson for a week--nothing. It really annoyed him that the only thing he'd ever achieved was something he hadn't really wanted to do that much in the first place. And anyway, since when did hitting a bird with a sandwich kill it? Kids must spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic? There must have been something wrong with it. It was probably about to die from a heart attack or something; it was just a coincidence. But if it was, nobody would believe him. If there were any witnesses, they'd only have seen the bread hit the duck right on the back of the head, and then seen it keel over. saw it die. They'd put two and two together and make five, and he'd be imprisoned for a crime he never committed. ... "What's that floating next to it?" Will asked. "Is that the bread you threw at it?" Marcus nodded unhappily. "That's not a sandwich, that's a bloody french loaf. No wonder it keeled over. That would've killed me.

A terrible confession it was (he put his hat on again) but now, at the age of fifty-three, one scarcely needed people any more. Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent's Park, was enough. Too much, indeed. A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning< which both were so much more solid than they used to be, so much less personal.

Even his sleep was full of dreams. He dreamt as he had not dreamt since the old days at Three Mile Cross — of hares starting from the long grass; of pheasants rocketing up with long tails streaming, of partridges rising with a whirr from the stubble. He dreamt that he was hunting, that he was chasing some spotted spaniel, who fled, who escaped him. He was in Spain; he was in Wales; he was in Berkshire; he was flying before park-keepers’ truncheons in Regent’s Park. Then he opened his eyes. There were no hares, and no partridges; no whips cracking and no black men crying “Span! Span!” There was only Mr. Browning in the armchair talking to Miss Barrett on the sofa.

Regent’s Park,” she said, frowning. “The Zoo is there, is it not? I daresay you should feel quite at home.” Again, she smiled. “In London, that is.

IN my early days there were stories about funny refugees murdering the English language. A refugee woman goes to the greengrocer to buy red oranges (I mean red inside), very popular on the Continent and called blood oranges. ‘I want two pounds of bloody oranges.’ ‘What sort of oranges, dear?’ asked the greengrocer, a little puzzled. ‘Bloody oranges.’ ‘Hm...’ He thinks. ‘I see. For juice?’ ‘Yes, we are.’ Another story dates from two years later. By that time the paterfamilias — the orange-buying lady’s husband — has become terribly, terribly English. He meets an old friend in Regents Park, and instead of talking to him in good German, softly, he greets him in English, loudly. ‘Hallo, Weinstock.... Lovely day, isn’t it? Spring in the air.’ ‘Why should I?

She felt something similar, but worse in a way, about hundreds and hundreds of books she’d read, novels, biographies, occasional books, about music and art—she could remember nothing about them at all, so that it seemed rather pointless even to say that she had read them; such claims were things people set great store by but she hardly supposed they recalled any more than she did. Sometimes a book persisted as a coloured shadow at the edge of sight, as vague and unrecapturable as something seen in the rain from a passing vehicle; looked at directly it vanished altogether. Sometimes there were atmospheres, even the rudiments of a scene; a man in an office looking over Regent’s Park, rain in the street outside—a little blurred etching of a situation she would never, could never, trace back to its source in a novel she had read some time, she thought, in the past thirty years.

I’d remembered something my Lock had said to me once. That we were our own army. That none could stand before us. In Regent’s Park, for a brief shining moment, I’d thought he and I were finally going to become that. I’d thought maybe we’d belong to each other.  At least for a while. That maybe he could keep me from becoming a monster while slaying one. But it was a stupid, stupid thought. Because as much as we wanted that fantasy to be our reality, even an attempt to make it happen ended only in disaster.

A terrible confession it was (he put his hat on again), but now, at the age of fifty-three one scarcely needed people any more. Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent’s Park, was enough. Too much indeed.

As a child he had walked in Regent's Park—odd, he thought, hope the thought of childhood keeps coming back to me—the result of seeing Clarissa, perhaps; for women live much more in the past than we do, he thought. They attach themselves to places: and their fathers—a woman's always proud of her father.

The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent’s Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained-at last! — the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, — the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

La vita, ogni momento, ogni goccia, lì, in quell'istante, al sole in Regent's Park, era fine a se stessa. Troppa grazia! Un'esistenza intera era troppo poco per trarne - ora che se n'era acquistata la facoltà- tutto il profumo; per farne scaturire ogni oncia di piacere, spremerne ogni sottinteso: cose assai più sentite di quanto non fossero una volta, ma anche assai meno personali.

It seemed as if nothing were to break that tie — as if the years were merely to compact and cement it; and as if those years were to be all the years of their natural lives. Eighteen-forty-two turned into eighteen-forty-three; eighteen-forty-three into eighteen- forty-four; eighteen-forty-four into eighteen-forty-five. Flush was no longer a puppy; he was a dog of four or five; he was a dog in the full prime of life — and still Miss Barrett lay on her sofa in Wimpole Street and still Flush lay on the sofa at her feet. Miss Barrett’s life was the life of “a bird in its cage.” She sometimes kept the house for weeks at a time, and when she left it, it was only for an hour or two, to drive to a shop in a carriage, or to be wheeled to Regent’s Park in a bath-chair. The Barretts never left London. Mr. Barrett, the seven brothers, the two sisters, the butler, Wilson and the maids, Catiline, Folly, Miss Barrett and Flush all went on living at 50 Wimpole Street, eating in the dining-room, sleeping in the bedrooms, smoking in the study, cooking in the kitchen, carrying hot-water cans and emptying the slops from January to December. The chair-covers became slightly soiled; the carpets slightly worn; coal dust, mud, soot, fog, vapours of cigar smoke and wine and meat accumulated in crevices, in cracks, in fabrics, on the tops of picture-frames, in the scrolls of carvings. And the ivy that hung over Miss Barrett’s bedroom window flourished; its green curtain became thicker and thicker, and in summer the nasturtiums and the scarlet runners rioted together in the window-box. But one night early in January 1845 the postman knocked. Letters fell into the box as usual. Wilson went downstairs to fetch the letters as usual. Everything was as usual — every night the postman knocked, every night Wilson fetched the letters, every night there was a letter for Miss Barrett. But tonight the letter was not the same letter; it was a different letter. Flush saw that, even before the envelope was broken. He knew it from the way that Miss Barrett took it; turned it; looked at the vigorous, jagged writing of her name.

I am alone; I am alone! she cried, by the fountain in Regent’s Park (staring at the Indian and his cross), as perhaps at midnight, when all boundaries are lost, the country reverts to its ancient shape, as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, when they landed, and the hills had no names and rivers wound they knew not where—such was her darkness; when suddenly, as if a shelf were shot forth and she stood on it, she said how she was his wife, married years ago in Milan his wife and would never never tell that he was mad!

Under a star-powdered sky the Recorded Programmes Department set up an open microphone on the roof of BH, which caught every sound of the raids until the last enemy aircraft departed into silence. On the roof, too, the parts of the rifle were named to Teddy and Willie by Reception from the main desk of BH, who told them frequently, as he looked down at the pale pink smoke of London’s fires, that it reminded him of a quiet sector of the line in the last show. Most of the staff juniors attended, and sometimes Reception would sit and play poker with them for margarine coupons, while the Regent’s Park guns rocked them like ship’s boys aloft.

Marcus couldn’t believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before. He'd tried to get te highest score on the Stargazer machine in the kebab shop on Hornsey Road--nothing. He's tried to read Nicky’s thoughts by staring at the back of his head every maths lesson for a week--nothing. It really annoyed him that the only thing he'd ever achieved was something he hadn't really wanted to do that much in the first place. And anyway, since when did hitting a bird with a sandwich kill it? Kids must spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic? There must have been something wrong with it. It was probably about to die from a heart attack or something; it was just a coincidence. But if it was, nobody would believe him. If there were any witnesses, they'd only have seen the bread hit the duck right on the back of the head, and then seen it keel over. saw it die. They'd put two and two together and make five, and he'd be imprisoned for a crime he never committed. ... "What's that floating next to it?" Will asked. "Is that the bread you threw at it?" Marcus nodded unhappily. "That's not a sandwich, that's a bloody french loaf. No wonder it keeled over. That would've killed me.

He could not, in good conscience, promote any association with Daisy Green and her band of ladies. He could more easily recommend gang membership or fence-hopping into the polar bear enclosure at the Regents Park zoo.

Martel admires efficiency, and the kill instinct of the bluesuits is efficient. Less than units in the Park of the Regent and six proctors have attempted to destroy him for being so inconsiderate as to ignore the ritual silence and stillness devoted to the Prince. The last two are squandering energy on yet another attempt.

Moa mock hunt reconstructed by Augustus Hamilton Giant Haast's eagle attacking New Zealand moa by John Megahan Auroch bull restoration by DFoidl Dodo at Oxford University Museum of Natural History by BazzaDaRambler Elephant bird - author unknown Bluebuck by le Vaillant 1781 Great Auk reconstruction at Kelvingrove, Glasgow by Mike Pennington Quagga photograph - Regent's Park ZOO, London by F. York Stephens Island wren by John Gerrard Keulemans Honshu wolf from The Chrysanthemum Magazine February 1881

I, Henrich Rattinoff, 835th of my name, King of Camden, Regent's Park, Primrose Hill, and the outlying boroughs that I occasionally visit, twinned incidentally with Fredericksburg, Luxembourg, and Mochudi in Botswana...

Regent’s Park was looking to the Met for an injection of integrity, it was in serious danger of an irony meltdown.

Burning aviators, clots of fire. The reeking night jar in our bedroom in Muswell Hill. Children skipping round me in a school yard, shouting taunts. My ship Lilith. London's winter cold and dark. The smell of ground sliced open in Regent's Park, my father's pale prisoner's face, his white hands on a table in the visiting hall. There it is. That was my war.

entire house on the edge of Regents Park.” “I don’t think your father would have liked it much,” said Sandy. “He has six Picassos and amethyst handles on all the taps in the toilets,” said Roger. “Ten minutes of chatting with him, and Sandy had an order for an entire new wardrobe of clothes for his girlfriend.

Yeah, I thought it would be something like that.” Her wheelchair, which was cherry-red with thick velvet armrests, had the turning-circle of a doughnut. She spun it on the spot and led Lamb into a long room lined with upright cabinets which were set on tracks like tramlines, so they could be pushed together when not in use: one huge accordion structure, each row containing file after file of dusty information, some of it so ancient that the last to consult it had long since faded to dust himself. Here were Regent’s Park’s older secrets. Which could all be stored on the head of a pin, of course, if the budget were there to squeeze it into shape. Upstairs, the queens of the database ruled their digital universe. Down here, Molly Doran was the keeper of overlooked history.

There was no chance she'd be able to focus on anything else, and so she'd walked all the way from Hampstead, through Primrose Hill, across Regent's Park, to arrive at the museum in time for opening. It hadn't taken long for her to find herself in the tearoom, where she was now finishing off a pot of Darjeeling and a slice of banana bread.

Prinny has been an unpopular monarch for 250 years. He spent fortunes on palaces and parks at a time when England needed all the money it could raise to finance the Napoleonic War. Well, the Napoleonic War was followed by the Crimean War and the Boer War and the First World War and the Second World War and they're all long gone. The Pavilion at Brighton and Windsor Castle and Regent Street and Carlton House Terrace and Regent's Park and the Nash Terraces are all still here. Blessings on your far-sighted spendthrift head, Prinny.

And what does ‘moving on’ mean for me?” Gareth let his head fall back and focused on the ceiling, unable to look at Cam while he said what he needed to. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I’m in love with my alpha.” His heart hurt saying the words while knowing Cam would never feel the same. “My wolf is totally on board with that, and I know that if…” He put his hand over his heart and tried to rub the pain away. “I feel it here…” No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t say any more. “You could bond?” “Yes,” he whispered

Annis's ennui lightened, too, when she saw the matched pair of white horses in the traces of the Rosefield carriage. She thought they must be Andalusians, like the mare she had met in Regent's Park, though these were bigger, with heavier hindquarters, larger heads, and a more pronounced curve to the nose. They would have been bred to harness, she supposed. Their manes and tails were braided with gold ribbon, and the metal fittings on their tack sparkled. When they set out, she was delighted to feel their power and to note the steadiness of their gait.

Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent's Park, was enough. Too much indeed. A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning; which both were so much more solid than they used to be, so much less personal.

The overall ‘take’ from the Berlin tunnel was vast, and far exceeded the capacity of any local monitoring. Some twenty-eight telegraphic circuits and 121 voice circuits were being monitored at any one time. Voice traffic was recorded on fifty thousand reels of magnetic tape, amounting to twenty-five tons of material. At the peak of operation the voice processing centre at Chester Terrace, overlooking Regent’s Park in London, employed 317 people, and eventually 368,000 conversations were transcribed. The teletype processing centre employed a further 350 people. For each day of the tunnel’s operation the output was four thousand feet of teletype messages.

Luckily, Coe had done so at the fag-end of a series of events so painfully compromising to the intelligence services as a whole that—as Lamb had observed—it had put the “us” in “clusterfuck,” leaving Regent’s Park with little choice but to lay a huge carpet over everything and sweep Slough House under