In their Wisdom by C.P. Snow

Old Symington was not old. Only Swaffield thought of using that particular appellation about him. This year he was still not forty. He did not look old. He did not even look vaguely paternal or as though administering pastoral care, as Eric Skelding did. At first sight, or more sights after that, not many would have guessed that Symington was the most active partner in a firm of solicitors, one respected in London and whose reputation, thanks to him, was growing: or that he had climbed to that job by merit, leaving school at sixteen, the son of a clerk in a local government office.

Not that he was unimpressive to look at. On the contrary, he was spectacularly handsome, but not in the fashion of an efficient professional man. Glossy haired, lustrous eyed, pillar-necked, he might in Edwardian days have been taken for a successful actor manager. If all the people involved in the Massie case, close to or remotely, had been collected in one room, he would have been the one to whom eyes kept turning. Hillmorton had remained good-looking, and, in an austere way, so had Sedgwick before his illness struck him. Liz was a sharply pretty woman and Mrs Underwood in her youth had been more than that. Some of the others had the presence which authority and recognition could bring with it, or which helped to produce those effects in the first place. All those physical manifestations were in the normal run of things, you would find something like them in any privileged group anywhere at any time. But you were unlikely to see anyone as picturesque as Leslie Symington. It was a rare gift, probably rarer than Sedgwick's intellect, certainly rarer than Ryle's sense.