"Take Shooting an Elephant, which recounts an incident during his time as a policeman in Burma. It is a remarkable piece. There is, firstly, the language. When he first sees the elephant, which is said to have run amok, it is standing, beating a bunch of grass against its knees, ''with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have". In the seconds after pulling the trigger the beast remains standing, but ''a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant... every line of his body altered... He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old". Then the elephant sags to its knees, its mouth slobbering. And, the utterly perfect sentence: ''An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him.'"
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