social antennae

So what did we make of her? The cultural changes of the past several years may have seemed profound but they had clipped no one’s social antennae. Within a minute, no, less, by the time Shirley had uttered three words, we would have known that she was of humble origins.

...

He gave the impression that if any utterance of his were to be disproved, he would change his view in line with the facts. Behind the owlish near-apologetic manner, I began to realise, was limitless confidence.

- Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

- off-white lies
- see in New Year

“I don’t want to see any more newspaper stories. I’m meeting the editor of the Guardian this evening. You can take care of the rest. And I want to see a report on my desk by lunchtime.”

As soon as he was gone, Nutting said, “That means you, Max. Make sure we’re copied in. You’d better get started. Harry, we'll divide the editors in the usual way.”

“D-notice?”

“Too late and we'll look stupid. Now ...”

I could think of nothing to say. Tapp, who had been chain-smoking through the meeting, lit another. He said, “We yielded to a lot of pressure and fashionable arguments to bring women on. The results are more or less as we predicted.”