Читать книгу The Lost Diaries - Craig Brown, Craig Brown - Страница 35

My antecedents, seasoned aristocrats all, were the founders of what we are now pleased to describe, in our impishly ironic way, as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

My great-grandfather, Senator Bore Vidal of New York, the owner of 200,000 acres of prime farming land east of Buffalo, married my great-grandmother Edwina Crashing, the daughter of Amelia Crashing, whose father was one of the Wilds of Montana, giving birth to my grandfather, Senator Wild Crashing Bore, who in turn married Miss Gore Blimey from one of the most influential aristocratic families in London’s gorgeously affluent Hackney East.

From their union sprang, with, I regret to say, more promptitude than pulchritude, the Hon. Mrs Bore V. Dull of Oklahoma, who then gave birth to a famously talented son, Gore V. Dull, later to become better known as Gore Vidal, now widely respected as the nation’s foremost novelist, social commentator and historian.

On my father’s side, I am related to Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, neither of them inconsiderable figures in the political arena, though one must learn, I suppose, to overlook their deficiencies in the facial hair department. On the military side, my distinguished great-great-grandfather General Gore L. Vidal was at Custer’s side at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Many believe it to have been General Gore’s personal message of encouragement to the troops (‘TO THE FIRST MAN WHO GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE, A FREE SHAMPOO AND SET’) that swung the balance in that least dainty of skirmishes. In turn, General Gore’s great-nephew, Sassoon Vidal, the founder of the first literary salon, emerged as the major poet of the First World War, no anthology complete without his moving lines: ‘The shells burst all about us/Spraying mud o’er our uniforms/Clean on this bleak morn.’

My English critics have attempted to ignore the illustrious and influential pedigree from which I so deftly sprang. But then no one of any breeding cares any more about that inconsiderable little offshore isle, sinking beneath the weight of its own – how shall I put it? – snobbery.

GORE VIDAL

What is it about books that makes them so truly great to read? I think it’s the way the words are printed on every page, the right way up and in just the right order.

This means you can start reading on the first page and then continue reading through the middle pages all the way to the last.

Here are some of my absolute favourite books to read.

War by Leo Tolstoy. A great read.

(And why not buy the two-volume edition which includes Peace by the same great author?)

Middlemarch by George Eliot. Another great read. Hundreds of pages of great words and punctuation, and all beautifully laid out.

Shakespeare by Shakespeare. He has so many great lines. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ ‘I am the Walrus.’ ‘My heart will go on.’

They’re part of the language.

Next week, I’m planning to learn how to peel an orange with a world expert fruit psychologist.

GWYNETH PALTROW