Word: duchess
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sport, there is no contest as self-consciously august as Wimbledon. Like a dowager duchess, Wimbledon walks hand in hand with a statelier past, revering its history, requiring homage to its traditions, never questioning its prerogatives. But in the 104th year of "The Championships upon the lawns of The All England Club," the unthinkable finally happened: Wimbledon came under attack. Players criticized the conduct of the tournament, fans erupted into a near riot, and a government committee challenged the privileges of the All England Club. The grande dame of tennis was, in short, told that she had become...
...Elizabeth cut short her reign, feeling that abdication undermines the mystique of the monarchy.) More sobering still was Charles' immediate predecessor, known after his 1936 abdication as the Duke of Windsor. His pitiful progress from resort to spa was followed by millions. All those awful photographs of the Duchess and the Duke, his skin scalded by flashbulbs, black ashtrays crowding the table like visas from a purgatorial kingdom of nightclubs: El Morocco, the Stork, the Lido. Those craterous eyes, staring off sidelong past the camera into the unforgiving background of history, which would soon reveal him as a dupe...
...18th century extramarital frolicking with the royals remained a family tradition. Of note were two daughters of the first Earl Spencer. Georgiana, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire but better known as the Duchess of Dimples, achieved unwedded bliss with a Prince of Wales, the eventual George IV. Her comely sister Henrietta boasted in her diary: "In my 51st year I am courted, follow'd, flatter'd and made love to, en toutes les formes, by four men." Not all the Spencers were so sportive. George, brother of the third Earl Spencer, converted to Roman Catholicism and, as Father...
FICTION: Consenting Adults or The Duchess Will Be Furious, Peter De Vries ∙ Italian Folktales, selected and retold by Italo Calvino ∙ Joshua Then and Now, Mordecai Richler ∙ Loon Lake, E.L. Doctorow ∙ The Middle Ground, Margaret Drabble ∙ The Second Coming, Walker Percy ∙ The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury
FICTION: Consenting Adults or The Duchess Will Be Furious, Peter De Vries ∙ Italian Folktales, selected and retold by halo Calvino ∙ Joshua Then and Now, Mordecai Richler ∙ Loon Lake, E.L. Doctorow ∙ Rough Strife, Lynne Sharon Schwartz ∙ The Middle Ground, Margaret Drabble The Second Coming, Walker Percy