Word: gerhardi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
British Author William Gerhardi once won the favor of a lady by telling the tale of a man who: 1) sliced off his nose while shaving; 2) dropped the razor, which cut off his big toe; 3) in his confusion switched the severed parts, so that ever afterward, whenever he blew his nose, his shoe flew...
...ROMANOVS-William Gerhardi-Putnam...
...William Gerhardi, a polyglot Englishman who was born in Russia, has written novels, short stories, a play, a critical biography of Chekhov. He is perhaps most widely known for his novel The Polyglots. Last week he added to his list a long (484-page), glittering, malicious, at times staggeringly funny history of the Romanov dynasty. Subtitled Evocation of the Past as a Mirror for the Present, it is a profuse record of peculiarly dizzy people in a peculiarly dizzy part of the world...
...Great "was only great in driving force . . . probably the greatest beast who ever wore a crown." When his wife took a lover Peter had his head chopped off and placed in her bedroom preserved in alcohol. He also "developed a taste for whipping young girls in their teens." Gerhardi thinks him far less responsible than history has made him for "hacking out a window into Europe"; gives evidence of his cowardice in battle, his lack of military talent...
...William Gerhardi (pronounced Jer-hardi), suave novelist whose undergraduate impression of Winston Churchill is famous ("poor stuff for a grown-up man"), signed up in the Officers' Emergency Reserve. Born in St. Petersburg, he thought it "reasonable" of Russia to wish her own former Baltic provinces to remain Baltic, not German. As for himself, "my home is in darkness, my income in jeopardy, my hopes for a career non-existent." Evelyn Waugh, creator of the bright young thing, observed with suspicious blandness that "the war is an extension of our normal habits of life; fighting has been a universal...