Word: kenton
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...hear nothing while above, to surrender to no soft impulse when below. That is why Stevens was deaf to the nasty political business that took place in the drawing rooms and why he was blind to the fuller life he might have shared with the flinty housekeeper, Miss Kenton...
...touches the reader deeply without applying the pressure of sentiment. The story runs on parallel tracks: the years before World War II, when Stevens worked for his beloved Lord Darlington, an aristocrat who falls into an alliance with the Nazis; and the late '50s, when ! Stevens seeks out Miss Kenton in hopes she will return as housekeeper and, perhaps, something more. In his own ornate, unknowing words, Stevens condemns himself as the English version of a "good German": a man who disappointed Miss Kenton, his father (an aged butler), his country and himself in blinkered devotion to duty...
...Bridge. They have peppered the story with deft details that illuminate the cottage industry of running a lavish estate: snipped hedges, gleaming doorknobs, decapitated fowl, the Times pages freshly ironed each morning. And they have filled the house with a perfect cast: Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton; James Fox as Lord Darlington; Peter Vaughn as Stevens' father, the proud old retainer who will never say die -- even when he does. These characters, like those in The Age of Innocence, are all genteel anachronisms. They sin, in our eyes, by not daring to sin; they are poignant in their fidelity...
...Stevens hesitantly agrees. Running Darlington Hall with a staff of four, which Mr. Farraday has requested, as opposed to the 17 assistants Stevens once supervised, has been hard on his nerves. A drive to the West Country might do him good. Besides, Stevens has received a letter from Miss Kenton, the housekeeper who resigned in 1936 to be married, revealing that she has left her husband. He will see her in Cornwall, encourage her to return to her old position and thus combine pleasure with business...
...persona that voters can trust, du Pont stands apart. He considers the obsession with "character" and the media's ceaseless quest for revealing personal anecdotes slightly silly. To his closest aides, du Pont's unapologetic approach is not mysterious. "He doesn't need this," says his longtime aide Glenn Kenton, campaign chairman. "He knows he could do a good job as President, but he can live without...