WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here.
PS I no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.
1. What are you currently reading? Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans by Kenneth Womack. Mal was a familiar sight to us Beatle fans. A little taller, a little older than "the boys," bespectacled Mal was their indespensible roadie. He was there from their beginnings at Liverpool's Cavern Club to the end on the rooftop for the Let It Be/Get Back concert. He was the inspiration for Shake, one of the Beatles' aides-de-camp in A Hard Day's Night and had cameos in both Help! and Magical Mystery Tour. He's got a story to tell about the act you've known for all these years, and here it is. Womack uses Mal's diaries and notes, as well as the reminiscences of his family and friends to tell us what it was like to "live the legend."
2. What did you recently finish reading? Kick: The True Story of JFK's Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth by Paula Byrne. Kathleen Kennedy was known as "Kick" to everyone. She was Joe and Rose Kennedy's second daughter and the fourth of their nine children. She was very close to her brother, Jack, the future President.
What a life she had! Summers at the Cape and winters in Palm Beach. Convent schools in Europe. In the same year, she met both The Pope and Mussolini. When her father was Ambassador to the Court of St. James, she was the star of the social swirl in pre-War London. Then, after war broke out and she returned to the US, she moved a bit out of her family's powerful orbit and got a job in Washington DC. She returned to wartime London to volunteer for the Red Cross ... and marry a Lord who was on his way to battle and, ultimately, a hero's death. As a titled widow and an heiress she embarked on a scandalous romance with her "own Rhett Butler." She boarded a small private plane to Cannes to introduce her lover to her father and hopefully gain his approval -- despite her financial independence, she was still a Kennedy. It crashed, killing all four passengers. She was 28.
One of her "best chums" was Evelyn Waugh, who would write Brideshead Revisited and based the character of Julia in large part on Kick. Her husband, Billy Hartington, was godfather to Andrew Parker Bowles. Yes, Queen Camilla's first husband. Kick's was a short, dazzling, ultimately tragic life. I wonder why it's never been made into a Netflix series.
