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GOLDEN LADS

Name: GOLDEN LADS
Author: Daphne du Maurier
ISBN: 1844080730

A STUDY OF ANTHONY BACON, FRANCIS AND THEIR FRIENDS

by Daphne du Maurier ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 1975

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Of the two golden lads—the philosopher, essayist and barrister Francis Bacon, and his brother Anthony, sons of Elizabeth I's Lord Keeper—du Maurier is most concerned with the career of Anthony, whose life was anything but golden. Francis is more or less neglected, until the Earl of Essex's trial when he spoke for the Crown and against Essex who had been his generous patron. Perhaps, it is suggested, he did this to protect his brother Anthony, a courier for the Earl, corresponding furtively with James VI of Scotland and engaged in covert reconnaissance activities in France. Not surprisingly Anthony was under beady-eyed scrutiny by both Elizabeth and Cecil and he usually wriggled out of Court appearances by taking to his bed. Francis in the meantime, because of his opposition to the Crown's tax subsidy proposal, was continually denied advancement (his compliant performance at the Essex trial brought about a change in that royal policy). Anthony died in 1601, at forty-three, before Francis' major accomplishments; both men were unmarried. There are hints that Anthony might have had homosexual tendencies—he was arrested in France (falsely, the author believes) on a charge of sodomy. Du Maurier's research is extensive, if somewhat haphazardly splayed. Her speculations concerning the authorship of some of Essex's written pronouncements—and by extension even some of Shakespeare's lines—and attempts to trace the course of Anthony's clandestine spying activities abroad are in the nature of asides rather than stringent analyses. Meandering, and truth to tell, a shade dull, but worthwhile as an oblique approach to Francis Bacon's neglected brother and Elizabethan espionage at the slippery edge of power.

Pub Date: Oct. 24, 1975

ISBN: 1844080730

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DOLL
by Daphne du Maurier

- BOOK REVIEW
ENCHANTED CORNWALL
by Daphne du Maurier edited by Piers Dudgeon

- BOOK REVIEW
THE REBECCA NOTEBOOK AND OTHER MEMORIES
by Daphne du Maurier

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.