Romancer

Once I used to believe I was such a great romancer / then I came home to a woman that I did not recognize.

[W]hat was once taught by sages, and believed by monarchs, has shared the fate of everything human and has sunk from its pristine rank to become the material and the machinery of poets and romancers.

No nightmare dreamed by man, no wild invention of the romancer, can ever equal the living horror of that place, and the weird crying of those voices of the night, as we clung like shipwrecked mariners to a raft, and tossed on the black, unfathomed wilderness of air.

That’s a good reminder of how they won the referendum: these cavalier romancers trounced the roundhead number-cruncher remainers. Surely the country wouldn’t be fooled by the same trick twice.

Barbara Cartland scratched out this trusty 19th-century romancer concerning the scrumptious Serena Staverly (Diana Rigg), who has the dreadful misfortune to be lost in a game of cards to the flint-hearted Lord Justin.