He won’t be remembered as Lord Bannside, but Ian Paisley will be remembered for shouting: ‘Never, never, never, never.’ The fourth never was hardly a shout, by his standards, but merged into the roar of the crowd.
Never is a useful word for rhetoric. In our mind’s ear we remember how Churchill stressed the word and paused as he said: ‘Never in the field of human conflict.’ That auditory memory is something of an illusion, for Churchill made his great speech about the ‘Few’ in the Commons, in 1940, and proceedings were not recorded in sound. What we have heard is the version he delivered again for a recording in 1951.
If Paisley managed four nevers, Lear outdid him in that moving line: ‘O, thou wilt come no more. / Never, never, never, never, never.’ Or, rather, that is what the First Folio has.
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