Word: authored
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...This dull dumpling of a princess," says Author Kronenberger in his first-rate biography, "adored Sarah for her looks, her quick mind, her unfettered personality; this inveterate stickler for form would put aside for Sarah the one great advantage she possessed, her rank." After they were married (Anne to Prince George of Denmark, Sarah to dashing young Colonel John Churchill, future Duke of Marlborough*), Sarah, at. the Queen's suggestion, addressed her royal mistress as "Mrs. Morley," became herself "Mrs. Freeman." Their husbands, joining in this playacting, were cast as "Mr. Morley" and "Mr. Freeman...
...Mistress of the Robes, Keeper of the Privy Purse. Soon, Arnie's entourage swarmed with Sarah's relations, including cousin Abigail Hill, a penniless gentlewoman who had sunk to the role of "dust broom" (as Sarah put it) to a titled lady. What happened next seems, as Author Kronenberger says, "too much in the flashy traditions of the theater to have happened in real life." Slowly, week by week, Abigail, the dowdy waif, replaced Sarah as the dowdy Queen's bosom friend-largely because Sarah had become haughty and downright rude to the Queen. When Sarah...
Modern Outlook. "Almost every anecdote concerning her is an encounter," says Author Kronenberger, and Marlbo-rough's Duchess is so rich in anecdotes that it becomes a series of unforgettable encounters. There are anecdotes in the grand manner-such as old Sarah marching into the law courts to forbid the sale of one of the Duke's presentation swords, crying: "Shall I suffer the sword which my lord would have carried to the gates of Paris to be sent to the pawnbroker's and have the diamonds picked out one by one?" There are anecdotes...
...great biography of Marlborough, Winston Churchill spoke of Sarah's "detached, disdainful, modern outlook upon life"; she resembled, he said, the sort of woman busy "in the public and social agitations of our own day." Author Kronenberger seems to agree with that view. "She was not at all, by happy standards, a great woman," he concludes, but she was forever so "inextinguishably herself" that she "persists even now." Moreover, she was like a great landmark in England's history-the last example of a nation that was changing "from a society of thieves to a nation of shopkeepers...
...Lucania, an even poorer region, and the book brought him such fame that he now writes with a special sense of mission about the Italian poor. His weaknesses are 1) too much self-consciousness in his pleading, 2) too little skepticism respecting the left. Yet few will read Author Levi's Impressions of Sicily without feeling a forgiving sympathy for both these weaknesses...