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One on One
Craig Brown
101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, each 1,001 words long, and with a time span stretching from the 19th century to the 21st.Life is made up of individuals meeting one another. They speak, or don’t speak. They get on, or don’t get on. They make agreements, which they either hold to or ignore. They laugh, they cry, they are excited, they are indifferent, they share secrets, they say ‘How do you do?’ Often it is the most fleeting of meetings that, in the fullness of time, turn out to be the most noteworthy.‘One on One’ examines the curious nature of different types of meeting, from the oddity of meetings with the Royal Family (who start giggling during a recital by TS Eliot) to those often perilous meetings between old and young (Gladstone terrifying the teenage Bertrand Russell) and between young and old (the 23 year old Sarah Miles having her leg squeezed by the nonagenarian Bertrand Russell), and our contemporary random encounters on television (George Galloway meeting Michael Barrymore on Celebrity Big Brother).Ingenious in its construction, witty in its narration, panoramic in its breadth, ‘One on One’ is a wholly original book.
Craig Brown
One on One
Dedication
For Frances
Epigraph
Tossed upon ocean waters,
Two wooden logs meet;
Soon a wave will part them,
And never again will they touch.
Just so are we; our meetings
Are momentary, my child.
Another force directs us,
So blame no fault of man.
Ga Di Madgulkar
We have as many personalities
as there are people who know us.
William James
The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere.
The moment is the only thing that counts.
Jean Cocteau
When Arthur Miller shook my hand I could only think
that this was the hand that had once cupped
the breasts of Marilyn Monroe.
Barry Humphries
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
ONE ON ONE
ADOLF HITLER
JOHN SCOTT-ELLIS
RUDYARD KIPLING
MARK TWAIN
HELEN KELLER
MARTHA GRAHAM
MADONNA
MICHAEL JACKSON
NANCY REAGAN
ANDY WARHOL
JACKIE KENNEDY
HRH QUEEN ELIZABETH II
THE DUKE OF WINDSOR
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
JAMES DEAN
ALEC GUINNESS
EVELYN WAUGH
IGOR STRAVINSKY
WALT DISNEY
P.L. TRAVERS
GEORGE IVANOVICH GURDJIEFF
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
MARILYN MONROE
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
GEORGE BROWN
ELI WALLACH
FRANK SINATRA
DOMINICK DUNNE
PHIL SPECTOR
LEONARD COHEN
JANIS JOPLIN
PATTI SMITH
ALLEN GINSBERG
FRANCIS BACON
HRH PRINCESS MARGARET
KENNETH TYNAN
TRUMAN CAPOTE
PEGGY LEE
PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON
ELVIS PRESLEY
PAUL McCARTNEY
NOËL COWARD
PRINCE FELIX YOUSSOUPOFF
GRIGORI RASPUTIN
TSAR NICHOLAS II
HARRY HOUDINI
PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
H.G. WELLS
JOSEF STALIN
MAXIM GORKY
LEO TOLSTOY
PYOTR IL’ICH TCHAIKOVSKY
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
HARPO MARX
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
BERTRAND RUSSELL
SARAH MILES
TERENCE STAMP
EDWARD HEATH
WALTER SICKERT
WINSTON CHURCHILL
LAURENCE OLIVIER
J.D. SALINGER
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
FORD MADOX FORD
OSCAR WILDE
MARCEL PROUST
JAMES JOYCE
HAROLD NICOLSON
