It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
The speaker found the address given by the Agee woman to be exceedingly boring, lasting an entire three quarters of an hour. Rather than offering a brief and straightforward apology, she chose to recount the lengthy backstory behind her book, which the speaker considered tedious and uninteresting.
This reaction highlights the speaker's frustration with unnecessary elaboration, suggesting that sometimes brevity and directness are more effective than lengthy explanations. The reference to her book as "beastly" further underscores the speaker's disdain for both the content and the delivery of the presentation.