martinet

Maxwell was a society girl and the daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, who doted on her, even as he was reputedly a violent martinet of a father.

Van Zweden, in turn, was a martinet specialist in the standards who seemed appealing as an about-face from Gilbert, less electric in the core repertory.

That the legendary anti-interventionist Taft supported a vain martinet whose tirades included lobbying for nuclear war suggests he might have been less than a rock-solid man of principle.

But Laws isn’t just a martinet, or the avatar of a brutal institution.

As are the old-fashioned words — like “martinet,” “popinjay” and “annealed” — that Galloway sprinkles through the text, the way Leigh strewed the beloved posies from her various country estates.