Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Picked this up as I completely love the 1939 film adaptation. Unfortunately this was a real let-down - it's a very quick read and has none of the depth and substance of the film.
He was forty-eight — an age at which a permanence of habits begins to be predictable.
She made him, to all appearances, a new man; though most of the newness was really a warming to life of things that were old, imprisoned, and unguessed.
He remembered the Diamond Jubilee; there had been a whole holiday at Brookfield, and he had taken Kathie to London to see the procession. That old and legendary lady, sitting in her carriage like some crumbling wooden doll, had symbolized impressively so many things that, like herself, were nearing an end. Was it only the century, or was it an epoch?
“Brookfield will never forget his lovableness,” said Cartwright, in a speech to the School. Which was absurd, because all things are forgotten in the end.
Interesting to relate to this given that there has been another Diamond Jubilee this year, over 100 years later.