| She is an eccentric in the fashion of a good many English women who have taken to the East, i.e. a mixture of battiness and extreme practicality. |
| And L'Engle invests the science-fiction novel's witch-angels, Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which, with a disarming battiness that metamorphoses into Miltonian grandeur when the story calls for it. |
| Of course, it's politically incorrect to call out people for such battiness. |
| The right is growing fonder of Iain Duncan-Smith, the party's defence spokesman, another Eurosceptic but unencumbered by Mr Portillo's complicated baggage or the battiness of Ann Widdecombe. |
| But it had been all over in a breath, just an open-and-shut piece of battiness, same as fellers have when they jump a bridge. |
| She was bats and contrary, but she seemed to be self-aware and have a genuine sense of humour about her own battiness and contrariness. |
