Word: courtiers
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...Chinese tale tells about a tyrannical prime minister of the 3rd century B.C. who assembled his courtier to test their loyalty. He had a deer brough before them and proclaimed it a horse. Those who imprudently disagreed paid the price of calling a horse a horse with their lives...
Much is known of Geoffrey Chaucer's life, much lost. He was a vintner's son who rose (through cleverness and, no doubt, the ability to entertain highborn ladies with after-dinner recitals) to become a government official, courtier and diplomat under three successive monarchs - Edward II, Edward III and Richard II. He was at least briefly a soldier, and while fighting in France under the Black Prince, he was captured, then ransomed for ?16. The smallness of this sum is a favorite joke among Chaucerians, but it amounts to $3,840 in modern terms, by Gardner...
...then came one of the grandest scams of all. In 1910, Backhouse and J.O.P. Bland, a London Times China watcher, published China under the Empress Dowager. The memoir was based on the diary of Ching-shan, a fin de siècle Manchu courtier. Backhouse claimed to have found this trove of gossip and intelligence in its author's house during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The diary became the jewel of the Oxford collection; scholars may have debated its authenticity, but hardly a soul dared suggest that Backhouse himself had written it. Now Trevor-Roper, revealing...
...palace or two" in Pakistan, where he hunts for two months every year, and London digs with four-figure faucets designed by Godfrey Bonsack of May fair. Then there is the ruler of Dubai, who likes to hoist up his skirts-all the way-and then see which courtier will be the first to mention the royal flash. Linda of Arabia deals in crashing generalities. "Arabs are hypochondriacs," she offers en passant. Bahrain is "tidy," Qatar is dull and Kuwait is full of trendy boutiques but still very conservative. One sheikh found his unmarried daughter with a man and took...
...contrast, Kevin Grumbach's performance as Monsignor Escudero has many more dimensions, but it is confusing. He is the typical Catholic priest making gentle jests over his supposed sinfulness, the suspicious courtier "educated in the most select European intrigues" and the imperious confessor; but he does not seem...