Francis King
Coarse and Classy
Like the American actress Tallulah Bankhead, the Australian-born Coral Browne was celebrated not only for her mastery of any role, however feebly written or demanding, but also for her imperious elegance and savage wit. As with Bankhead, the edge of that wit was continually sharpened by the word to which the subtitle of this biography demurely makes reference. When, at the first performance of Pygmalion, Mrs Patrick Campbell’s Eliza uttered her ‘Not bloody likely!’, the audience initially gasped and then surrendered to shocked laughter. It was the same when Coral Browne came out with an expletive shorter and far cruder.
The contrast between ladylike good manners and the sort of language that might have been used by an Australian stevedore was all too often the pivot of the latest Coral Browne story. One such, related by Collis, had Browne in competition with an elderly theatregoer who, on an evening of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Foreign-policy pundits, then as now, tended to lack subtlety, even if they could be highly articulate about a nation they did not like very much.'
Read Lucy Wooding's review of Clare Jackson's 'Devil-Land', which has won the @WolfsonHistory prize.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-view-from-across-the-channel
From the First World War to Evelyn Waugh: @DaisyfDunn takes us into the world of Oxford between the wars.
Generously supported by @Lit_Review
#CVHF #AmazingHistory #UniversityofOxford
'That they signify something is not in question. Yet how to interpret the symbols of a long-vanished society? What would the inhabitants of the 50th century make of the ubiquity of crosses in Europe?'
Hilary Davies on the art of the Lascaux caves.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/poems-of-the-underground