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The Canterbury Tales
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bookshelves: uk, currently-reading, poetry
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Liberty: Incorpor...
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Rick Perlstein
“It would end like a Henry Fonda movie - something like Twelve Angry Men, where only the jury's prejudices had blinded them from seeing that they were about to condemn an innocent man, and where the liberal's gentle, persistent force of reason had compelled the brutish conservative, by the last reel, to realize the error of his ways.

But America wasn't described by such liberal narcissism. It was a place where the real Henry Fonda, in 1970, turned over to the FBI office in Los Angeles a death threat that arrived at his home - "YOUR DUAGHTER [sic] HAS BEEN TRIED FOR TREASON FOR BEING A TRAITOR. HER DATE OF EXECUTION WILL BE DEC 1970 TO PROTET [sic] HER & SAVE HER PAY 50,000 CASH" - but where FBI files reveal nothing was done to find the identity of the sender. The father had submitted the ransom note to the same FBI office that was running a harassment campaign against his daughter.

It was also the America where the real Henry Fonda, when his daughter told him she opposed firing Angela Davis because she was a Communist, said, "If I ever find out you're a Communist, Jane, I'll be the first person to turn you in.”
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

Katherine Rundell
“We are Noah's Ark in reverse: it is as if we are raging through the bowels of the boat, setting fire to the stables, poisoning the water. Faced with such destruction at such pace, acquiescence becomes impossible. The time to fight, with all our ingenuity and tenacity and love and fury, is now.”
Katherine Rundell, The Golden Mole: and Other Living Treasure

Ian Leslie
“In October, Yoko and John celebrated John's thirty-first birthday with friends, including Ringo, in a hotel room in Syracuse, New York, where Yoko had an exhibition. There is a tape of a rowdy singalong, led by John on an out-of-tune guitar. It includes a slightly drunk and maudlin rendition of 'Yesterday'. John gets the words wrong (‘now it looks as though I've lost my way'), and replaces ‘she’ with ‘he’: why he had to go, I don't know, he wouldn't say...”
Ian Leslie, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs

Marghanita Laski
“Queer,’ said Hilary, and then, 'But at least the Occupation showed each man what he was capable of. Don't you think it was something to be able to find that out?'

'No, why?' said Pierre. 'Some found they were better than they thought, some worse. We are finding that out all the time in our everyday lives.”
Marghanita Laski, Little Boy Lost

Ian Leslie
“For all his formidable self-confidence, he harboured doubts about the person he was at heart, and sometimes questioned whether he had a heart at all. Iris Caldwell, his girlfriend from Liverpool, recalled that her mother had accused him of being emotionally cold. It ate at him: years later, just before the release of 'Yesterday', Paul called Iris and said her mother should listen to Yesterday to see if it changed her mind. In an interview in the 1980s, he brought up the moment when he heard about his mother's death (‘What are we going to do for money?’), and said, ‘I’ve never forgiven myself for that. Really, deep down, I never have quite forgiven myself for that.’ As he danced through a Beatle life in which every door seemed to open the moment he touched it, he retained, in his mind, the baleful image of himself he drew as a teenager: a face that scowled rather than smiled. He once described his public self as 'pleasantly insincere’. He was drawn to those who saw through his masks and loved him nonetheless. Being accepted by John confirmed to him that he was special. Being loved by Linda, and by Heather, convinced him he was good.”
Ian Leslie, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs

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