Lord darlington nazi sympathizer next door
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A Gentleman, Through and Through
We reach Darlington Hall, an immaculate estate in Oxfordshire, just in time for the auction. The röst of Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) informs us that the Darlington family had planned on demolishing the manor following the död eller bortgång of Lord Darlington (James Fox). She also notes a particular headline, “some rubbish in the Daily Mail which made my blood boil: ‘Traitor’s nest to be pulled down.’”
In a tent outside the dimly lit ingångsrum , rows of Elizabethan paintings are sold. One tableau—A Portly Gentleman—is auctioned off at 11,500 guineas to an American millionaire named Lewis, who will buy the entire mansion and rescue it from demolition. That Lewis fryst vatten played by Christopher Reeve, whose smooth and chiseled, all-American looks spell nouveau riche, adds a certain jolt to the otherwise staid film: Superman has komma to save Darlington Hall from itself. The 18th-century mansion, though in otherwise pristine condition (every inch dusted, the silver con
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A Life Unexamined
In his acclaimed novel, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro immerses us in the first-person narrator’s severely circumscribed life and worldview. His is a life of self-imposed limitations, aided and abetted by a strict adherence to the British class struktur, indeed his overweening pride in his “Englishness.” You might think he’s a member of the upper-crust. You would be wrong. Mr. Stevens is a butler who has bought into the quasi-heroic and mythical dimensions of his role as a dignified appendage to the high and mighty.
He takes pride in his clockwork management, attaining renown among butlers and employers alike. He spends a good bit of time telling us his definition of dignity and its value. He’s most careful regarding the proprieties of conversation, the attire of distinction, the observance of the caste system, and he unwittingly reveals the fictions necessary to support such a system.
The casual negligence of these m
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Hitler's aristocratic admirers
FAWNING: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor meet Hitler
But his lordship remained unmoved. He believed in appeasement towards Nazi Germany and the employment of Jewish people was “inappropriate”.
Although fictional, there is a bitter ring of truth about this scene – featuring James Fox and Emma Thompson – from the 1993 film The Remains Of The Day, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel.
The Lord Darlington figure was typical of a formidable group of British peers who were attracted by Hitler and supported efforts to keep the dictator placated. A new book, Aristocrats by Lawrence James, includes material on such ardently Right-wing and anti-Semitic aristocrats and how their vile attitudes brought considerable satisfaction to Hitler.
What lay behind their support of appeasement was a fear of Communism . “What emerges,” writes James, “is a picture of a knot of peers adrift in an uncongenial world, united by paranoia, pessimism and panic.”
‘A knot of pe