Ah, it’s the 106th anniversary of the birth of Robert Conquest, renowned historian, author of The Great Terror, one of the first works to expose the extent of Stalin’s tyranny, and the composer of many, many silly, filthy limericks.
Exposing facts about communism didn’t make him popular with the useful idiots in the West who defended Soviet Russia (and you can still find them around today) but he had an answer to that:
(When the Soviet archives were opened, his publisher wanted a new edition, and The Great Terror: A Reassessment duly came out in 1990. His friend Kingsley Amis suggested it be called I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.)
There’s more about his limericks (and more examples) in this fond remembrance by Blake Morrison
…and in this blog, including
It’s little wonder he once said “Limericks are not very gentlemanly — or it’s a special kind of gentleman”.
But perhaps his finest moment was summarising all of Shakespeare’s famous ‘seven ages of man’ speech…
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy… creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
… Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
As:
…which is just one of the reasons why Philip Larkin called him
il miglior fabbro [the better craftsman] … at least over five lines.
