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One of two things can happen...

Hilary's maternal grandfather, George Foster, was a Sergeant Instructor in the Machine Gun Corps. When she was a small child, he could still recite, and did recite, the training manual for the Vickers machine gun.

The words, "the gun will continue to fire until one of two things happen", had a magic to Mantel, "like an incantation".

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2 minutes

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