Word: servant
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This cruelly candid self-assessment appears in the remembrance of his nephew Robin, who is himself a novelist (The Servant, The Slaves of Timbuktu). And although the effect is morbid, it is by far the best part of the book, which is otherwise devoted to a soporific account of the family genealogy. Death watches can be questioned on grounds of taste, but it is certainly true that Willie Maugham did not die well...
...master of the many-splendored art of Irish malarkey was Flann O'Brien, pseudonymous author of At Swim-Two-Birds. Flann O'Brien was one of the pen names of Brian O'Nolan, wit, playwright and civil servant. Under the name of Myles na gCopaleen, he wrote a satirical column for the Irish Times; he died in Dublin on April 1. But in all three identities, he was a great kidder. At Swim, first published in London in 1939 and twelve years later in New York, has since gathered a subterranean reputation-and thus this new edition...
...seemed only to want to kindle old memories. He returned to Cambridge, visited his old workshop in the Cavendish Laboratory, and dined with the dons at his old college, Trinity. Realizing that he had no academic gown, the required dress for evening meals in college, he asked a college servant to fetch one for him. The man brought back the very robe that Kapitsa had left behind 32 years...
Died. Sir Ernest Gowers, 85, British civil servant, who served for 60 years in every capacity from Lloyd George's secretary to London civil defense chief in World War II, known in the U.S. as the rhetorician who slew the dragon of verbosity, first with his bestselling plea for simple language, Plain Words (1954), and last year for his revision of the classic Fowler's Modern English Usage, which preserves its original charm; of cancer; in Midhurst, Sussex...
...more reserved of the two, slow to make friends") and a few intriguing anecdotes. There was, for example, the time when Caroline first became aware of people's color. Once she noticed that she was turning brown in the sun at Palm Beach. "George," she asked a Negro servant, "how did you get that color? I've been in the sun all day and I'm only a bit brown." "Well, Miss," George confided, "I've been lying in the sun all my life, I guess." After that, writes Shaw, Caroline "never asked another question about...