From the opening of TH White's book, "Gone to Ground," published in 1935:
The end of the world came quickly. The Communists went for the fascist tooth and nail; the liberal anarchists joined in; The British Israelites proclaimed a pogrom of the Scottish nationalists and pulled down Stirling Castle whilst the latter were burning the Great Pyramid; somebody had the amusing idea of assassinating all the European sovereigns and dictators simultaneously, which was fortunately successful; the protestant church had a meeting on the subject of divorce; lynch law was repealed in America; Lord Beaverbrook, in full armor, led a crusade against the Paynims, but was drowned in the channel after decisive engagement with lady Houston's yacht, Britannia; The Ogpu, the storm troops, and Sir Oswald Mosley's bodyguard committed hari-kari; the franc dropped to 124.21 amidst the shrieks of the populist and scenes which had not been witnessed since the massacre of Saint Bartholomew; all the civil aeroplanes of all the nations opened convenient slits in the underside of the fuselage and took to the air with loads of little bomb; the regular fighting aircraft deposited their explosives with fatal precision, doing their step-dives from 10,000 feet so beautifully that you were quite enraptured for a moment before you were definitely dead. In fact, everything went like clock-work; even the clockwork bombs.
Within a week the world was over. It came as a surprise to some of the older-fashioned people: and particularly to a party that was following the Flat Hat Hounds on the last day of the year. There were six of them, and they had enjoyed a remarkable run. They were breaking up their fox on the outskirts of an industrial town called Beding when the aeroplanes arrived.
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