TAKI THEODORACOPULOS : The Great Paul Johnson
Johnson, Paul
books In RevIeW The Great Paul Johnson “N ancy mitford told me that the only way she had been able to obtain a satisfactory orgasm while masturbating was by thinking about Lady Jane...
...I was happy to see Robert E. Lee included, in my eyes the greatest American ever, on a par with Washington...
...Earthshakers, like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar...
...He includes the following: God’s heroes, such as Deborah, Judith, Samson, and David...
...I lied and swore I (HarperCollins, 299 pages, $25.95) had no idea what she was talking about...
...Even saints have them, at least where I come from...
...Paul’s historical books are all classics, starting with Modern Times, A History of the Jews, Art: A New History, A History of the American People, A History of Christianity, his short but precise books on Washington, Bonaparte, the Renaissance, I could go on and on...
...Yes, I know, dear boy,” said a sheepish Paul...
...Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, and Sir Walter Raleigh...
...This is a wonderful book to read and, more important, to give to one’s son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter, if you can tear them away from the idiot box...
...His command of the language is as great as his knowledge, and that’s really saying something...
...Gee thanks, Paul, you could have warned me before I swore to every saint I know,” was all I said...
...books In RevIeW The Great Paul Johnson “N ancy mitford told me that the only way she had been able to obtain a satisfactory orgasm while masturbating was by thinking about Lady Jane Grey, which produced an extraordinary frisson of ecstatic fear...
...What I loved about this book was that it’s an encyclopedic tour of history, old and modern, men and women, saints and sinners...
...During the (UK) Spectator’s summer party, a London fixture, his wife of 51 years and mother of his four children, Heroes: From Alexander Marigold, came up to me the great and Julius Caesar and told me she knew damn to Churchill and De gaulle well that Paul and I were up by Paul Johnson to no good...
...Feminine fire like 76 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR APRIl 2008 books In RevIeW Boudica, and exemplary heroes such as Henry V and Joan of Arc...
...His choices reflect his variety of interests, beginning with his devout Christianity...
...Human but saintly...
...She gave me a ReviewedbyTaki wintry smile and walked Theodoracopulos off...
...Paul used to come to my chalet in the Swiss Alps for long summer walks, and one year he told me he would be bringing an assistant along...
...He is the closest thing we have to a saint, a man so devout and so Catholic he has managed not only to forgive people who have tried their best to blacken his reputation, but has come to a point now in his life to find good in everyone...
...This is a wonderful book to read and, more important, to give to one’s son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter, if you can tear them away from the idiot box...
...Johnson did not include Napoleon, a man he absolutely loathes, for the same reasons I loathe Churchill...
...APRIl 2008 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR 77...
...I had read her correspondence with Evelyn Waugh, another man whose talents I admired as much as I loathed his character, and had found them so bitchy I ignored the time-honored principle of De mortuis nil nisi bonum...
...Long live Paul Johnson and his heroes...
...Jane Carlyle and Emily Dickinson, Lincoln and Lee...
...His latest on heroes is timely because of the lack of heroes in our time...
...I was leaving this morning and saw her sleeping like an angel, felt horribly guilty and confessed...
...Never mind...
...Churchill and De Gaulle, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II conclude the list...
...But it is not clear that teenage girls today know anything about her...
...I am no fan of Wellington’s nor does Churchill race my motor, the latter a warmonger, a grandstanding fool who could have made peace earlier but oversaw the destruction of Europe and the British Empire for personal ambition...
...This was vintage Paul...
...I assumed the assistant was a summer fling...
...Mind you, Paul Johnson was being Paul Johnson...
...Our own George Washington, Nelson and Wellington...
...A saint indeed...
...It was just Nancy being Nancy, old boy, she was just having fun with Evelyn, she didn’t mean any of that…” Paul Johnson was being Paul Johnson...
...I then worked myself through the scrum and breathlessly told Paul that Marigold was suspicious and for him to take care...
...For cerebral heroism he includes Ludwig Wittgenstein, and for heroics as a hostess, Lady Pamela Berry...
...Also St...
...He is the closest thing we have to a saint, a man so devout and so Catholic he has managed not only to forgive people who have tried their best to blacken his reputation, but has come to a point now in his life to find good in everyone, including such Taki Theodoracopulos is High Life columnist for the Spectator of London and editor of Taki’s Top Drawer...
...Thus states Paul Johnson, the greatest living polymath of Britain, in his latest historical opus, Heroes...
...He is, unlike other prolific writers, a pleasure to read, with personal nuggets as the one about Nancy Mitford coloring his impeccable prose...
...He attends church daily because “I am a sinner” but in between has managed the most remarkable of careers, one that favorably compares him to the original polymath, the synonymous Dr...
...arch sh--ts and phonies as Christopher Hitchens and his ilk...
...Nancy Mitford, one of the famous, or infamous, Mitford girls, was a good friend of the author, and he once took me to task for writing that she was a bitch, if an extremely talented and intelligent bitch...
...B ut i digress...
...He is also a great journalist, having written his London Spectator column for as long as I can remember, in fact almost as long as I have, more than 30 years...
Vol. 41 • April 2008 • No. 3
