A critic has a duty to ignore anything happening off stage, and to make no allowances for any shortcomings that may result... All the same, I am at any rate partly human, and it would be absurd, as well as impossible, for me to persuade myself that I do not know that Terence Rattigan has for the last couple of years been staring into the eyes of the old gentleman with the scythe... So I am doubly delighted to say that Cause Célèbre (Her Majesty's) betrays no sign of failing powers; on the contrary it could almost herald a new direction for Sir Terence, and a most interesting one, too.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "A critic has a duty to ignore anything happening off stage, and to make no allowances for any shortcomings that may result... All the same, I am at any rate partly human, and it would be absurd, as well as impossible, for me to persuade myself that I do not know that Terence Rattigan has for the last couple of years been staring into the eyes of the old gentleman with the scythe... So I am doubly delighted to say that Cause Célèbre (Her Majesty's) betrays no sign of failing powers; on the contrary it could almost herald a new direction for Sir Terence, and a most interesting one, too." in the context of "Bernard Levin, 'Rattigan's Act of Defiance', The Sunday Times (10 July 1977), quoted in Michael Darlow, Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work (1979; rev. ed. 2010), p. 463" to mean that wisdom is timeless.