Trying to Please - Hardcover

John Julius Norwich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1904349587 ISBN 13: 9781904349587

Publisher: Dovecote Press, 2008

Synopsis

John Julius Norwich's life has reflected an appetite for living, enlivened by a sense of personal theater. Trying to Please is an engaging and amusing memoir that describes a glamorous but vanishing world. From the monasteries on Mt. Athos to a camel trek across the Sahara, the book shows how Norwich's passions for history, travel, and music have combined with simpler pleasures like friendship and a close family. A remarkable life and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

About this title

About the Author

John Julius Norwich is the author of The Great Cities in History as well as magisterial histories of Norman Sicily, the republic of Venice, and the Byzantine Empire. He has also written widely on architecture and music, and has presented some thirty BBC television historical documentaries.

Review

"The author of this thoroughly delightful memoir is scarcely so well known in this country as in England, where he was born more than eight decades ago. John Julius Norwich began his working life in 1952 (he was then named John Julius Cooper) as an officer for the British Foreign Service, but he did not set off on his path to renown until the fall of 1963, when he decided to leave the service and try his hand at freelance writing. He has done so ever since, having written more than 20 books, most of them in the field of popular history, but he is best known as a lecturer on cultural subjects and the host of historical television documentaries.

"Trying to Please is an absolutely delicious book, in part because Norwich writes so fluidly and engagingly, in part because he has been to so many places and done so many interesting things, and in no small part because he happens to be the only child of one of the most famous and mythologized couples of the first half of the 20th century....

"He seems to have no illusions about its shortcomings or the injustices that helped sustain it, but only the terminally hard-hearted will fail to be captivated by his description of life at Belvoir Castle or his nostalgia for it:

`What has gone (or very nearly) is the sense of amplitude--the sheer scale of that aristocratic life of three-quarters of a century ago, made possible only by the existence of an enormous staff but of a thriving social community numbering several hundred people, with the great house at its center. One or two may still continue, at Chatsworth for example, or perhaps Blenheim; but the combination of hereditary wealth and old tradition without which such houses cannot survive is nowadays rare indeed. In the 1930s it was not. Belvoir was in no way exceptional. There were in those days dozens--perhaps hundreds--of houses in which that sort of life went on, not all of them on quite the level I have described, but not a few on a scale more magnificent still. Nor, in the surrounding country, was there any resentment, any more than there was any servility. The house was a source not only of employment, but of pride....'

"It's a good life, and Norwich shows no sign of slowing it down. More power to him." --Jonathan Yardley --The Washington Post, September 5, 2010

"Memoirs can create a variety of responses in a reader; Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich is entertaining, witty, and a plain old-fashioned good read...." --Holly Scudero --Sacramento Book Review

"If British memoirs with celebrity name dropping and juicy gossip on every page are your cup of tea, this one is for you.... His aristocratic parents--she a silent film star and he ambassador to France--raised him `to please.' He did so throughout their lives and does so for all of us with this pleasing and entertaining book." --Jim Barnes, Editor --IndependentPublisher.com

John Julius Norwich has lived a charmed life and would be the first to acknowledge it.... In Trying to Please [he] ... records his life.... There are grim events--infidelity, divorce, deaths--but there is much more travel, discovery and insouciance. --The Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2010

"[Norwich] writes ... with typical cheerfulness.... This is a genial, old-fashioned book. Its value lies...in its anecdotes and details about great persons and places from a vanished era." --Boston Sunday Globe, October 8, 2010

"...Mr. Norwich is clearly very much his own man, not just interesting for being Duff Cooper's son--Trying to Please is a success, for it is indeed attractive and winning--all in all a very pleasant read and, with its unusually modest price, a bargain to boot." -- Martin Rubin --The Washington Times

Edition details

• Publisher: Dovecote Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1904349587
• ISBN 13: 9781904349587
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384