popinjay

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.

While Gaudi doesn’t hide his contempt for the popinjays and idiots who wasted the lives of good men, he is unstinting in his admiration for heroism and self-sacrifice.

Protest the power of privileged popinjays who for years turned blind eyes to systematic cheating by the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but won’t let teenagers take medicines prescribed for asthma and ADHD.

Here is the ultimate insult to this obese, superannuated popinjay: the book renders him invisible, as if flushing him away into oblivion.

It was this transition that helped turn “Trump into Trump” — from a comparatively minor fish in the Manhattan real estate pond into the world’s greatest popinjay.