Word: basile
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Tired of "all the Arthurian tripe about the Holy Grail," Novelist Costain has written his own version of what happened to the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. His hero is Basil of Antioch, a low-born artisan hired by Joseph of Arimathea to fashion a silver casing to hold the homely original. While young Basil is still wrestling with clay models, he also begins a long wrestle with sacred and profane love in the persons of 1) Deborra, the rich Christian girl he marries, and 2) Helena, a toothsome pagan baggage who has bewitched him with...
...potion seems to stymie both girls. It keeps Basil too cool toward Deborra to consummate his marriage and not warm enough toward Helena to make more than a mental pass at her throughout the book. But it does help Basil get his work done. He rattles around the Mediterranean world from Jerusalem to Antioch to Rome in order to see saints and apostles like Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul, and etch their images on the chalice. These holy men wear their hair and their platitudes long. Together with Author Costain's lumbering, pseudo-Biblical style, they reduce...
When Nero, in a fit of rage, orders the Praetorian Guard to toss Helena from a tower, Basil heads home to faithful little Deborra, who is waiting for him back in Antioch. In no time, they are walking the dog together and billing & cooing over a hoped-for manchild. As for the chalice, it is soon stolen, never to be seen again, but a "miracle" enables Basil to finish the casing: he sees, and carves on it, a vision of Jesus. Author Costain's own vision of all this comes pretty close to reducing early Christianity to soap opera...
...contests for Republican district delegates, lost only one city (New Bedford, the bailiwick of Taft's state chairman, Newspaper Publisher Basil Brewer). Of the ten delegates-at-large, at least two were for Eisenhower. That made the count: 29 for Ike, three for Taft, six uncommitted. When the word reached
...caricature of himself as a bitterly disappointed old man. In sharp contrast is Mazzini Dunn, an ineffective 19th century liberal, whose mealy-mouthed idealism is fit only for the parlor. Earl Montgomery played this part with skill and with a consistency notably lacking in many of the roles. Basil Langton's direction of this difficult play was on the whole uninspired, as were the settings by Robert O'Hearn...