On 5 April [1982], the British Task Force left Portsmouth, cheered and waved off by a pugnacious and surprisingly bloodthirsty crowd, clamouring for a fight to restore their cheapened honour, a bit of a comedown in comparison with past epic deeds and struggles. After all, in the last long century and a half, this was a nation that had stood up against Napoleon, the Tsar, the Kaiser and Hitler, among others — far too many others.
Javier Marías, Berta Isla [2017], trans. Margaret Jull Costa (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2018), 296.