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When the news of the storming of the Bastille reached Versailles, the hapless Louis XVI expressed the hope that this was a mere revolt. "No, sir," replied the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, "it's a great revolution." For the sake of the House of Windsor, we must trust that those advising the royal family at this unhappy time will also be blunt. The national outpouring of affection and grief for the "people's princess" could be dismissed as a form of collective hysteria that will die away as surely as the echo of muffled funeral bells. No tumbrels loom...
...DIED. SIR GEORG SOLTI, 84, fierce maestro who prodded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to the front of the world stage; in Antibes, France. During his conducting debut at the Budapest Opera, Solti's audience fled--not from his Mozart, but out of fear that Hitler, then in Vienna, was fast approaching. Never again. On the Chicago podium, he transfixed listeners, seemingly verging on levitation in his energetic efforts to draw tight phrasing and brilliant coloration from his musicians. His athleticism won the orchestra 23 Grammy Awards during his 22-year reign...
...DIED. SIR ERIC GAIRY, 75, brutal and bizarre Premier of Grenada from 1967 to 1979; in Grand Anse, Grenada. A grass-roots labor leader who came to power by flouting the colonial plantocracy, Gairy ruled by caprice. He terrorized his opponents with his henchmen, the Mongoose Gang; traveled to the U.N. to expound on UFOs; and once visited London to judge a Miss World contest (the winner, no surprise, was Miss Grenada...
There are no bad places to stump. So 1998 Republican Alabama Governor hopeful and Houston Rocket forward Charles Barkley, on trial last week for punching a guy in a bar (he won the case), used his time on the stand for gubernatorial trash talk. Among Sir Charles' policy statements...
...first Indian scholar to be named as head of a Cambridge college, Sen will succeed mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah in January, at which point Sen will abdicate his University professorship...