What makes Edmund White a great memoirist? His indiscretion, his gossip, his wit, and his unsparing take on French intellectuals...Memoir of Paris
Hugh Trevor-Roperclaimed his masterpiece was nearly done. But his wife was dubious. “Our attic is crowded with Chapter Ones. Never a Chapter Two” Parliamentary Memoirs & chapter 2
German is abrasive. French is the height of elegance. Italian sounds like poetry: Why do we find some languages more beautiful than others? It was five hundred years ago when the apparently polyglot Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, declared “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.” German already didn’t rate very well, even if it certainly sounded rather different than it does today Sounds of Slav(e)s