Sunday, April 17, 2011

L'artillerie De La Nuit

Hot gossip and dossiers!

From Michael Korda's "Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia"

"...In every way the opposite of Sir Lawrence of Arabia, Captain BH Liddell - Hart was tall, elegant, stork like, fond of the good things of life, and so fascinated by women that  he oversaw the smallest details of the lingerie for both his wives, was exacting and deeply involved in the design of their corsets, and regularly measured the waists of his two daughters. 

"...He was in fact a walking encyclopedia on the subject of  lingerie - or as one of his biographers, Alex Danchev referred to it wittily, "l'artillerie de la nuit" - as knowledgeable about bras and merry widows and garter belts as he was about war. A perfectionist in all things he was obsessed by the ideal of the feminine wasp waist, which was the Schwerpunkt (to borrow a phrase from German strategic thinking) of his sexual desire.


"...Despite these differences, he and Sir Lawrence got along very well; and Lawrence, in his many letters to Liddel Hart and in his lenghty written commentaries on the text, is perhaps franker about himself than with anyone else except Charlotte Shaw. He respected Liddell Hart as a scholar, and was pleased to be taken seriously as a strategic thinker. Their admiration and friendship were genuine.


"...Liddell Hart made contact with Lawrence as early as 1927 under one of his many guises as military editor of Encyclopedia Britannica - it was part of his strategy to command as many positions in the field of military commentary and journalism as he could - proposing Lawrence should write the article on "Guerrilla Warfare."

Imperial Albion! Kinda makes you wonder what JCF Fuller's passions were...

Pic - "Pretty Wreckless!"

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