Kat is joined by Iona Italia for a discussion about sleeping with younger men, why she writes personal essays, and what happens if you have all the right junk in all the wrong places.
I am in the midst of reading "Dreadnought" - Robert Massie's doorstop-length history of the Anglo-German naval race running up to World War I - and just encountered this passage about Winston Churchill's American mother, Jennie Jerome, at this time a widow for 5 years or so, and well known for her active social life (after Lord Randolph Churchill contracted syphilis and had to cease marital relations, Jennie was rumored to have had dozens or even 100+ lovers):
"[Winston] returned to England to find his mother about to marry George Cornwallis-West, 'the handsomest man in England,' who was only sixteen days older than Winston and twenty years younger than the bride. Her friends were appalled, but Jennie didn't care. 'I suppose you think I'm very foolish,' she said to a friend, 'but I'm having such fun.'"
I am in the midst of reading "Dreadnought" - Robert Massie's doorstop-length history of the Anglo-German naval race running up to World War I - and just encountered this passage about Winston Churchill's American mother, Jennie Jerome, at this time a widow for 5 years or so, and well known for her active social life (after Lord Randolph Churchill contracted syphilis and had to cease marital relations, Jennie was rumored to have had dozens or even 100+ lovers):
"[Winston] returned to England to find his mother about to marry George Cornwallis-West, 'the handsomest man in England,' who was only sixteen days older than Winston and twenty years younger than the bride. Her friends were appalled, but Jennie didn't care. 'I suppose you think I'm very foolish,' she said to a friend, 'but I'm having such fun.'"
Seemed on point to this wonderful episode.