Sir Timothy Monday’s wit was of that particularly English vintage — dry as a well-aged sherry and twice as deceptive. It was not the thunderclap wit of the satirist nor the polished cruelty of the drawing-room duellist, but rather the subtler, more treacherous sort that slipped into a conversation like a silver fish and left ripples long after it had gone. He deployed it with the care of a man tending orchids — sparingly, almost absentmindedly — yet it always landed where it would do the most good or, on occasion, the most elegant harm. Those who mistook his languid manner for vagueness often found themselves, moments later, quoted back to themselves with surgical precision, their pomposities turned gently inside out. And yet there was warmth in his irony — a kindness behind the blade — as though he teased the world not to wound it, but to keep it awake.
