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In the <i>London Review of Books</i> for 20 February 2014 Colin
Burrow has a (good I think) review of Geoffrey Hill's <i>Broken
Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012</i>. Burrow notes that Hill was "a
grammar-school-educated son of a policeman from Bromsgrove, and so
was not ever likely to be an Eliotean Tory in a four-piece suit".<br>
<br>
I was really puzzled by the "four-piece suit": Google does suggest
that the inclusion of a matching bow-tie can turn a three-piece suit
into a four-piece one, but I cannot imagine Eliot wearing such a
monstrosity. So I wrote to Burrow and he told me what I probably
should have known, that it was a joke, but not an original one, as
he had stolen in from Virginia Woolf. Woolf wrote to Clive Bell that
she was always expecting Eliot to turn up in a four-piece suit. I
suppose the point of the joke is that the fourth piece remains
unspecified; Burrow admitted that he had wondered if it could have
been spats, while admitting that that would have meant five pieces.<br>
<br>
This somehow reminds me of the volume control in <i>This is Spinal
Tap</i> that goes up to 11.<br>
<br>
Jeremy Hawthorn<br>
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