Sentence The Twohundredandseventyseventh
“Winter does seem at last to be in the offing,” said Daphne to me this morning, over tea and toast served on Aunty Christ's willow pattern china, as she gazed out at the snow-crusted lawn, and the riot of the small peeps footprints from last night; and she sighed: “they have fled from a strife of which we sowed the seeds and now reap the whirlwind,” and I knew she was thinking of the carving up of Arabia after what she still refers to as 'The Great War', and the creation of artificial vassal states and kingdoms owing fealty to the European Empires; “you should read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” she said, indicating the shelf where T E Lawrence's life's work stood, “if you want to understand the desire for hegemony in those parts, the British need to control and determine the fates of peoples around the globe, without heed of cultures and histories that existed before we ever ruled the waves,” and I sat, waiting intently, for this was the place where her father, the great Egyptologist, had spent most of his life, and where Daphne had first met Maude, when they were two children on holiday from Edinburgh, cousins who had been kept apart because of a family feud which had divided their parents' generation, though no-one now remembers what it was about, except that a salmon was involved, and an emerald tiara!

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