Word: butlering
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...Monfreid meets, among others, an imprisoned spy (a "venomous reptile") whose escape he enables and later regrets; a Chinese trepang trader on a deserted island; a metrosexual polyglot butler; a Bedouin shouldering a Remington; a priest who manufactures hashish; and a hashish distributor who operates from an undertaker's office. He sketches all the misfits he encounters with anthropological and sartorial precision, colorfully and poetically noting the red tarboosh of a Tigrean guard; the "sublime crease" of a servant's "beautiful putty trousers"; and a Greek engineer's soiled celluloid collar, "yellow and clouded as a clay pipe...
...under questioning called the proceeding a character assassination. And, in a sense, he was right - that was the whole point. On the last day of his testimony at the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed, former butler Paul Burrell was forced to defend his credibility against an army of lawyers intent on, if not destroying it, then at least giving it a good beating. But early on it became clear that this was not going to be the courtroom drama everyone had hoped for. Instead, there was back-pedaling, name-calling and quibbling over semantics...
...statement that takes a bite out of Mohamed Al-Fayed's claim that they were assassinated to stop them getting married. But Mansfield opened to a page in Burrell's 2003 book A Royal Duty, and read out a passage that indicated some people did mind - including the former butler himself. In the book, Burrell describes a conversation he once had with Diana's good friend Rosa Monckton about Dodi. "We must do something about this one," Burrell told Monckton. "He is not right...
...surviving snippets of Burrell's life as butler to the world's most famous woman include six notes that Diana had written to him, a box of holiday snapshots from trips their families had taken together, and a lavender-colored spiral notebook in which he had jotted down descriptions of people and events and that "as far as I can see, adds nothing to the inquiry," Baker said as he admitted it all into evidence. Michael Mansfield, who represents Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, wasn't so sure: "It may be what it doesn't disclose...
...inquest and the intensity of Mansfield's questioning had confused him. (With his quick-fire interrogation and his reedy, disdainful tone, Mansfield is a cross between TV detective Columbo and Harry Potter's Professor Severus Snape.) "I didn't know what I would be asked," the former butler said. "I thought it would be easier than it is. Quite frankly, it's been horrid...