There’s a lovely connect between these and the TV series Fawlty Towers (also known as Farty Towels).
Any idea? Go on, have a go.
A clue? Okay.
Hag.
Do you remember that wonderful, wonderful moment in Fawlty Towers where actor John Cleese’s Basil, battered, bruised and put-upon by his nagging wife Sybil [played by Prunella Scales], foresees the end of his short, miserable life?
Zoom! What was that? That was your life, mate. Oh. That was quick. Do I get another? Sorry, mate, that’s your lot.
And while we’re about it, let’s savour some of his epithets for her. Golfing puff-adder. The dragon. Toxic midget. Sabre-toothed tart. My little piranha fish. My little nest of vipers.
Rancorous, coiffured old sow.
Now let us accompany Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus to Cumae, in Campania, about, erm, one thousand nine hundred and fifty years ago.
Continue reading I, Claudius; Claudius the God and his wife Messalina by Robert Graves (both 1934)
Book Bore. 