Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Esprit de Corps - Sketches from Diplomatic Life - cover

Esprit de Corps - Sketches from Diplomatic Life

Lawrence Durrell

Publisher: Open Road Media

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

A former member of Great Britain’s diplomatic corps, the celebrated author of the Alexandria Quartet offers eleven sketches of life in service of the crown.   After decades spent representing Britain around the globe, Antrobus has earned a shirtful of medals and the right to pass afternoons in his London club, musing over old times. His memory is long, and every old embarrassment still rankles—no matter how ridiculous. The incident with the Yugoslav ghost train, for instance, still causes him to clench his fists in fear. When he speaks of Sir Claud Polk-Mowbray, he takes pains to lower his voice—lest an American hear. And his stomach has never recovered from the incident involving the fried flag. Based on Lawrence Durrell’s own experience in the diplomatic corps, Antrobus’s cutting observation is drawn from the strange and humorous truth. Few are those with a better sense of place than Durrell, and even fewer with wit to match.
Available since: 06/12/2012.
Print length: 90 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • King Henry IV - The Shadow of Succession - cover

    King Henry IV - The Shadow of...

    William Shakespeare, Charles...

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Shakespeare’s riveting, epic drama of a family in crisis, and a country on the brink of civil war. Wracked by illness and tormented by guilt, King Henry IV fears for England’s future after his death.  The heir to the throne, Prince Hal, seems intent only on a life of debauchery in the company of the dissolute – but hilarious – Sir John Falstaff.  As war looms and the stakes increase, father and son struggle to face their destinies – and each other.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:Harry Althaus as Earl Of Westmoreland and Justice ShallowWilliam Brown as King Henry IVWilson Cain III as Earl Of Northumberland and BardolphMichael J. Cargill as Thomas, Duke Of Clarence and PetoTony Dobrowolski as Earl Of Worcester and Chief JusticeLisa A. Dodson as Mistress Quickly & Nurse Shawn Douglass as Prince John and PoinsRaul Esparza as Hotspur and PistolRaymond Fox as Prince HenryNed Mochel as The Douglas and The MessengerNicholas Rudall a Sir John FalstaffDoran Schrantz as Humphrey, Duke Of Gloucester & Doll Tearsheet
    Show book
  • The Best of Bruce Chatwin - On the Black Hill and The Songlines - cover

    The Best of Bruce Chatwin - On...

    Bruce Chatwin

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A Whitbread Award–winning novel of Welsh twins and an international bestseller about Aboriginal culture by “the brilliant English writer and stylish nomad” (Los Angeles Times).   After his masterpiece of travel writing, In Patagonia, put him on the literary map, Bruce Chatwin penned a novel about twin brothers who never venture far from their Welsh farm. On the Black Hill won the Whitbread Literary Award for Best First Novel and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Following that work of fiction, Chatwin turned his focus to Australia and Aboriginal culture, creating a wholly original hybrid of memoir, travelogue, and novel in the international bestseller, The Songlines.  On the Black Hill: For forty-two years, identical twins Lewis and Benjamin Jones have shared a bed, a farm, and a life. But the world has made its mark on them each in different ways. At eighty, Lewis is still strong enough to wield an ax, and though he’s hardly ever ventured outside his little village on the Welsh/English border, he dreams of far-off lands. Benjamin is gentler, a cook whose favorite task is delivering baby lambs, and even in his old age, remains devoted to the memory of their mother. With his delicate attention to detail, Chatwin’s intense and poetic portrait of their shared lives in a little patch of Wales is “beautiful and haunting” (Los Angeles Times).   “A brooding pastoral tale full of tender grandeur.” —The New York Times Book Review  The Songlines: Long ago, the creators wandered Australia and sang the landscape into being, naming every rock, tree, and watering hole in the great desert. Those songs were passed down to the Aboriginals, and for centuries they have served not only as a shared heritage, but also as a living map. Entranced by this cultural heritage, a narrator named Bruce travels to Australia to probe the deepest meaning of these ancient, living songs, and embarks on a profound exploration of the nomadic instinct.   “Extraordinary. A remarkable and satisfying book.” —The Observer
    Show book
  • Some Do Not    - cover

    Some Do Not   

    Ford Madox Ford

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The first novel in the author’s celebrated Parade’s End Tetralogy explores the social tensions between marriage, sex, and honor at the outbreak of WWI. London, 1910s. Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant mathematician, shows little emotion when his wife, Sylvia, leaves him for her lover. But when she tires of the romantic pursuit and informs Christopher of her desire to return to him, it proves to be one more episode in their masochistic marriage—Sylvia’s faithless torments yet again bested by Christopher’s infuriating chivalry. Then, on a golfing weekend in Rye, Christopher meets a young suffragette by the name of Valentine Wannop, whose passion for ideas is matched by her beauty. In Valentine, Christopher sees the possibilities of life and love he has denied himself thus far. But the small dramas of their individual lives are suddenly interrupted when the world goes to war. Author Ford Madox Ford’s masterful Parade’s End series is “in human psychology and literary technique . . . as modern and modernist as they come.” The first of four volumes, Some Do Not . . . sets in motion the complex web of attachments, passions, and resentments that unfold across an era of profound change (Julian Barnes, The Guardian).
    Show book
  • Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb - cover

    Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure...

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the ninth of the 12 stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in Strand Magazine in March 1892.
    
    An engineer, Victor Hatherly, attends Dr. Watson's Surgery after his thumb is chopped off, and recounts his tale to Watson and Holmes. Hatherly had been hired for 50 guineas to repair a machine he was told compressed Fuller's earth into bricks.
    
    Hatherly was told to keep the job confidential, and was transported to the job in a carriage with frosted glass, to keep the location secret. He was shown the press, but on closer inspection discovered a "rust of metallic deposit" on the press, and he suspected it was not being used for compressing earth. He confronted his employer, who attacked him, and during his escape his thumb is chopped off. Holmes deduces that the press is being used to produce counterfeit coins, and works out its location. However, when they arrive, the house is on fire, and the criminals have escaped.
    
    ©2016 Rick Sheridan (P)2016 Rick Sheridan
    Show book
  • Hypnos (Unabridged) - cover

    Hypnos (Unabridged)

    H. P. Lovecraft

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    "Hypnos" is a first-person narrative, written from the perspective of an unnamed character living in Kent and later London, England. The narrator writes that he fears sleep, and is resolved to write his story down lest it drive him further mad, regardless of what people think after reading it. The narrator, a sculptor, recounts meeting a mysterious man in a railway station. The moment the man opened his "immense, sunken, and widely luminous eyes", the narrator knew that the stranger would become his friend--"the only friend of one who had never possessed a friend before." In the eyes of the stranger, he witnessed important knowledge of the mysteries he always sought to learn. From this point on, he would touch his friend and sculpt him daily. At night they would commence their adventures, exploring worlds beyond human comprehension. Over time, the narrator's companion begins to speak of using their ability to transcend into the unknown as a way to rule the universe (via a set of drugs). The narrator is frightened by the prospect and disavows such hubris to the reader. Soon the narrator is off on a foray with his friend, travelling through a void that he explains is beyond human sensation. Passing through several barriers, eventually the narrator comes to one he cannot cross, though his friend does. Opening his "physical eyes", the narrator wakes up and awaits the return of his friend, who awakes severely shaken and reticent, warning only that they must avoid sleep at all cost. From then on, with the aid of drugs, the two avoid sleep, as each time they succumb, they both seem to rapidly age and are plagued by nightmares that the narrator refuses to explain. The story ends with the narrator explaining that one night, his friend fell into a "deep-breathing sleep" and was impossible to arouse. The narrator shrieks, faints, and awakes surrounded by police and neighbors, who inform him that his friend was not real. There is only a bust of his friend in his room, engraved with the Greek word: _____ (Hypnos).
    Show book
  • The Red Badge of Courage - cover

    The Red Badge of Courage

    Stephen Crane

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The Red Badge of Courage is a masterpiece about a young private in the Union Army whose youthful enthusiasm about the glory of battle gives way to increasing doubt and worry that when he comes to be tested in his first encounter on the battlefield, he will be found deficient of courage.
    Show book