Word: empress
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...monarchies, there traditionally has been little distinction drawn between the treasures of the ruler and those of the nation. A lawsuit filed in New York last week on behalf of the revolutionary government accuses the Shah of diverting $20 billion in national assets to his own use, and charges Empress Farah with taking $5 billion. But it offers no evidence and indeed admits that the sums are pretty much a guess. The Shah's own figure for the size of his fortune, given to Barbara Walters of ABC, is $50 million to $100 million. Even that would represent...
...last week, disc jockeys were spinning the group's recording of Rasputin, which has been issued by the government record company Melodiya. At the same time, curiously, the sellout novel of the year depicts Grigori Rasputin's sexual escapades, including boudoir frolics with Russia's last empress, the Tsarina Alexandra...
Author Pikul's suggestion that the empress slept with Rasputin, for which there is no basis in fact, seems designed merely to appeal to the prurient interests of the proletariat. So do passages alluding to Rasputin's vast sexual appetite and his zest for orgies-which have been amply documented by historians. But the book seemingly has other and more unsavory functions. One is to encourage the xenophobia that still has a strong hold on the many Russian chauvinists in the elite, who believe that alien forces have caused their homeland's troubles down through the ages...
...Hitler is planning across the border in Germany. Durrell is still prone to overripe passages, but some of his audacious effects work memorably. He describes the madam of a French brothel sitting in her establishment, "enthroned in wigged splendour like a very very old ice cream of a deposed empress." At its frequent best, Livia offers a world of cool, dark enchantment...
...SALT summitry to be a welcome contrast to the summits he has covered in tropical Third World capitals. Among Vienna's pleasures, notes Griggs: "Its cooler climate, the absence of king-size cockroaches, honest-to-goodness hotels with clean sheets and, behind the tapestries in what was once Empress Maria Theresa's ballroom, wiring for the simultaneous translation of the proceedings...