Word: eton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...began life as a prodigy. The son of an Oxford physiologist, he could read and talk almost before he could walk. It is said that once, when the talented toddler fell and cut his forehead, he inspected the blood with detachment and asked: "Is it oxyhemoglobin or carboxyhemoglobin?" At Eton, Haldane was regularly beaten by senior boys. But by the time he left school, he could read Latin and Greek, French and German, and, as he observed with matter-of-fact pride, "I knew enough chemistry to take part in research, enough biology to do unaided research...
Tall (6 ft. 4 in. by the time he was 15) and myopic, Huxley grew up through Eton and Oxford to live in a thin, rarefied world of his own. His notion of conversation, Osbert Sitwell grumbled, was to relay data on the "incestuous mating of melons" or the "curious amorous habits of cuttlefish." In words that Clark applies to all the Huxleys, young Aldous seemed less a human being than "something more nearly approaching a controlled experiment...
When Booker McConnell & Co., a 150-year-old British-owned sugar and rum company, acquired controlling interest in Master Spy James Bond four years ago, the deal was in deference to Ian Fleming. Bond's creator and Booker's then Chairman Sir Jock Campbell had been Eton classmates, continued to be golfing partners. They also were mutual enthusiasts about the West Indies, where Bond frequently cavorted and where Booker owns eight sugar plantations, as well as investments in ships and stores. When Fleming, during a golf game, complained that no one would buy his Bond-holding Glidrose Productions...
From his early childhood, Randolph felt compelled to emulate his towering father. After undistinguished years at Eton and Oxford, he followed his father's early example by popping off to the U.S. for a lecture tour. One subject: "Why I Am Not a Socialist." American audiences loved him, but Britons turned him down when he ran for Parliament. In fact, he lost three successive campaigns for a seat until he finally sneaked into Parliament for a brief stay in 1940 after winning an unopposed by-election. "I like Randolph," purred Noel Coward. "He is so unspoiled by his great...
Still another totally recalled English boyhood? One more sensitive child of privilege weaning himself from old Nanny and stumbling gamely onto the fields of Eton? Not at all. V.S. (for Victor Sawdon) Pritchett's brilliantly belligerent account of his first 20 years is about as far as a memoir can get from the usual look-back-in-languor...