More than a year has passed since I wrote the post below, and if anything, things have only gotten worse. The Republican candidate is now president. The ideals my father fought for, and a generation of young people risked and lost their lives for, have been desecrated. A man with…
Category: Travel
The erudite Mr. Huxley made his home in the Hollywood Hills. Besides writing a number of seminal works, he wrote screenplays. He also really loved Los Angeles, unlike a lot of writers who made a tremendous amount of money here (working for the film industry) but couldn’t help harping on…
There are some people whose soul you can see in an instant. You can see it captured in an image or in a passage from a book. After I read this description of a former nanny to two princes in William Kuhn’s novel, Prince Harry Boy to Man, I asked…
I was reading the other day about Englishmen on secret missions in Afghanistan, and to my surprise, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) may have been there in the late 1920s, possibly working behind the scenes to bring down King Amanullah. Where did I find this intriguing bit of history?…
Ellen Terry (1847-1928) appeared on stage for seventy years. During that time she married twice, managed a theater, toured the United States, taught and lectured, corresponded with George Bernard Shaw, was painted by John Singer Sargent, and wrote a very interesting memoir. Most of the letters written to me I…
Marilyn Monroe — seen here being presented to Queen Elizabeth II — was very savvy about appearances; about what made people tick, and how fame blurred the picture. She struggled to balance her inner life against a manufactured persona. Everyone’s childhood plays itself out… I think to love bravely is…
In language gender is particularly peculiar. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English? French children, for instance, are male even if they are girls, in English there seems to be considerable doubt, in German they are definitely neuter. Even more startling…