Jan 2, 2004
"MY SAINTED GRANDMOTHER!" ...
So I'm sitting here at my keyboard, just reading one last essay for the night. It's Christopher Lockwood's review of Jonathan Fenby's new biography, Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost. Suddenly, the last cookie catches in my throat and the coffee to wash it down splashes through my nose over the screen and keyboard. It's a mess. As I clean it up, I think"My sainted grandmother!" It's an old family friend's quaint expression for:"Why, that's amazing!" The Telegraph's last paragraph is:
Perhaps the best part of the book is the section describing the Chungking years. Full play is given to the fraught relations between Chiang and the various unhappy Americans, most notably"Vinegar" Joe Stilwell, who were sent to liaise with him. And delightfully much is made of the eccentricities of Chiang (a teetotal syphilitic, allegedly) and his seductive and imperious wife, Meiling, who at one point contemplated buying the American election in order to place her lover, Wendell Wilkie, in the White House. History, somehow, just isn't as colourful any more."My sainted grandmother," indeed!