Artemis Cooper
Forfatter af Paris After the Liberation: 1944-1949
Om forfatteren
Image credit: hodder.co.uk
Værker af Artemis Cooper
Associated Works
The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos (2013) — Redaktør; Introduktion, nogle udgaver — 655 eksemplarer
Livros Condensados: Veterinário de Província | A Queda Fulminante | Nella, a Sobrevivente | A Linha Vermelha (1993) — Forfatter — 5 eksemplarer
Reader's Digest Condensed Books: Driving Force • The Island Harp • Stephanie • Watching in the Dark • The White… (1993) 3 eksemplarer
Kirjavaliot: Pelikaanimuistio, Onnen sirpaleet, Paluu, Kuin kulkisi pimeässä (1994) — Forfatter — 3 eksemplarer
Nathan's vlucht; Schaduw van hoop; IJskerker; Nella — Forfatter — 1 eksemplar
Satte nøgleord på
Almen Viden
- Juridisk navn
- Beevor, Hon. Alice Clare Antonia Opportune Cooper
- Andre navne
- Beevor, Honorable Alice Clare Antonia Opportune Cooper
- Fødselsdato
- 1953-04-22
- Køn
- female
- Nationalitet
- UK
- Land (til kort)
- UK
- Bopæl
- England, UK
New Mexico, USA
Alexandria, Egypt - Uddannelse
- French Lycée, London
Camden School for Girls
Oxford University (St Hugh's College)
Convent of the Sacred Heart, Woldingham, England, UK - Erhverv
- editor
biographer
memoirist
historian - Relationer
- Norwich, John Julius (father)
Cooper, Duff (grandfather)
Cooper, Lady Diana (grandmother)
Beevor, Antony (husband)
Huston, Allegra (half-sister) - Kort biografi
- The Hon. Alice Clare Antonia Opportune Cooper, known as Artemis Cooper, is the daughter of John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, the historian, and his first wife, Anne Clifford. She is a granddaughter of the famous society figure Lady Diana Cooper and her husband Alfred Duff Cooper, the politician and diplomat In 1986, Artemis Cooper married fellow writer and historian Antony Beevor, with whom she has two children. Her books include The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David; Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949 (written with Antony Beevor); Watching in the Dark: A Child's Fight for Life; and Cairo in the War, 1939-1945. She also edited The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper and The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper, 1913-1950. In 2012, she published the biography of Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, whom she knew from childhood.
Medlemmer
Anmeldelser
A lovely biography of an extraordinary man. Thoroughly enjoyed this.
Two of my favorite bits--among many--from this book. A quote from one of his friends: "Wouldn't it be lovely if Paddy came in pill-form, so you could take one whenever you felt depressed."
And this note, which Paddy wrote in a book he was reading when he felt his end was near: "Love to all and kindness to all friends, and thank you for a life of great happiness."
What a blessing to be able to write that!
Two of my favorite bits--among many--from this book. A quote from one of his friends: "Wouldn't it be lovely if Paddy came in pill-form, so you could take one whenever you felt depressed."
And this note, which Paddy wrote in a book he was reading when he felt his end was near: "Love to all and kindness to all friends, and thank you for a life of great happiness."
What a blessing to be able to write that!
I have six of her books and this biography made me get them all out - totally tattered Penguins, most spilling pages from frequent use - except for Omelette and Wine, and Bread and Yeast which reflect a better quality of binding glue; and Italian Cooking which was more damaged by being left out in a Johannesburg rain storm. Fascinating book, extremely well constructed and expressed.
The book and its subject matter being different things I believe that 4 stars go rather to the latter. While reading it I kept asking myself if such a life could be possible in our times. In the end my answer is "sure, why not?" and for me that is the book's main achievement.
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Associated Authors
Statistikker
- Værker
- 10
- Also by
- 8
- Medlemmer
- 1,342
- Popularitet
- #19,173
- Vurdering
- 3.9
- Anmeldelser
- 34
- ISBN
- 70
- Sprog
- 13
Although PLF was born into the upper middle class (father in the Indian Civil Service, mother heiress to a minor industrialist with pretentions to the stage), I was surprised to find that he had a fairly ordinary upbringing for his first four years in the Northamptonshire village of Weedon, where he was farmed out to the sister of friend of his mother while she alternated between London and India with his older sister. Indeed, I now know that I have passed the fairly ordinary house where PLF was brought up on a number of occasions.
But when he was returned to his mother's care at the age of four, he passed into a different set of surroundings, socialite London in the 1920s. His schooldays were spectacular only for his lack of achievement, but he developed for himself a love of literature, language, art and history. He conceived the idea to walk across Europe to Constantinople, a sort of itinerant scholar, foraging and fending for himself, sleeping in barns and treetops. But whilst he did a certain amount of this, he also had the benefit of letters of introduction to a few key individuals along his route, who in turn passed him on to their friends and acquaintances. In this way, he made his way through a Europe that in a few short years was to vanish.
At the outbreak of war, PLF gave up his life as the lover of a Romanian countess to return to Britain and enlist. Through a set of remarkable circumstances - well, remarkable to mere mortals such as you or I, but apparently increasingly "normal" for PLF - he ended up as an SOE operative in Crete, where he lived for four years amongst the Cretans, participating in guerrilla warfare against the occupying Germans, and ultimately achieving fame by kidnapping a German general and spiriting him away to Cairo.
After the war, PLF travelled widely, writing a number of books on Greece, a country he loved, but also other travel books and magazine articles. He continued to mix in the literary circles of Britain and Europe, and had lasting friendships with many notable writers, artists and thinkers. He died in 2011 at the age of 97.
This book is written by Artemis Cooper, grand-daughter of Duff Cooper (one of PLF's extended circle of friends) and so someone who has some direct personal knowledge of the man. At the same time, this is no hagiography: Artemis Cooper details PLF's problems with authority, his issues with applying himself to work, and the fleeting nature of many of his personal relationships. It seems that PLF was a person that you either took to immediately or thought to be way too self-centred for his own good; Cooper outlines some instances where PLF committed gaffes which estranged him from some quite influential people. At the same time, the level of personal detail Cooper puts in this book accurately reflects the man's gregariousness; if, at the beginning of A Time of Gifts, the reader is tempted to think of the 18-year old PLF boarding the ferry to the Hook of Holland to begin his walk as an innocent abroad, then the early chapters of this book will disavow you of that illusion.
The walk acts as a good framing device, as it was PLF's first major achievement, but he didn't complete his full account of the walk in his lifetime. A Time of Gifts was assembled from diaries, letters and notebooks and was published in 1977, taking him from London to Esztergom, on the Czech/Hungarian border; the second book, Between the Woods and the Water, taking him through Hungary and parts of Romania to the Iron Gates gorge on the Danube and the border with Bulgaria, did not appear until 1986. The final volume, The Broken Road, was still in progress when PLF died. It actually does not cover his arrival into Constantinople (as PLF always referred to Istanbul), and picks up some weeks later, recounting his trip to Mount Athos in Greece, a peninsula known for its remarkable isolated monasteries. It had not appeared in 2012 when this book was published; Cooper and Colin Thubron finally got the book into shape and published it in 2014.
This biography fills in many of the missing parts of PLF's story started in his account of his "Great Trudge" across Europe. Cooper hinted at some of this in the footnotes to The Broken Road, but here we see as detailed an account of PLF's life, loves and travels as one could ask for. I recommend it.… (mere)