Robert Latona
Desire Under the Algarrobos
Margot Callas was six years older than Simon and 37 years younger than Graves. Surprise, surprise: Simon came down with a severe case of the hots, in its starry-eyed, mooncalf mode. Margo was strikingly lovely, and, in contrast with some of the other women elevated to a plinth in the Graves goddess gallery, intelligent and classy.
Sounds exactly like opera to me
If you must slaughter the innocent, it is best if you do so in Italian, or better yet, Czech. But if there is no getting round the business, all you can do is extenuate it and hope you will somehow retain the audience’s sympathy by emphasising that well, yes, Myra is a child killer, but it’s not really her fault. Yeah, good luck with that one.
The man who almost wasn’t
Whatever the true reasons may be, Juan Pujol walked away from a comfortable life in a neutral country, and, acting entirely on his own, for no discernable personal motive, and certainly without being asked, convinced German military intelligence that he was not only anxious to hasten the Axis victory in Europe, but also in a position to do so.
The unquiet grave
During his final—for most Spaniards, long overdue—illness, Generalissimo Franco had St Teresa of Avila’s desiccated forearm at his bedside the whole while, and to this day, everyone mimes back-scratching whenever the subject is brought up.
Mummy dearest
Hildegart’s tragedy may well come to occupy a niche of bizarre but instructive prominence in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.
Canada’s Grand Old Man of Letters
Davies was a ‘character’ by conviction, at first styled in the fashion of his earliest creation, the harrumphing Samuel Marchbanks, echt outsider and purveyor of hilarious home truths to complacent Canadians.
The Nymphet and the Granny
All right: Dolly Haze was a victim — orphaned, abducted, sexually abused for months on end and deprived of her adolescence. Most of all, though, she was a victim of bad timing, having lived, suffered and died before it was commonplace to cash in on personal ordeals with ghostwritten memoirs plugged by Oprah and resold to Hollywood.
