One on One

One on One
Craig Brown

101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, each 1,001 words long, and with a time span stretching from the 19th century to the 21st.Life is made up of individuals meeting one another. They speak, or don’t speak. They get on, or don’t get on. They make agreements, which they either hold to or ignore. They laugh, they cry, they are excited, they are indifferent, they share secrets, they say ‘How do you do?’ Often it is the most fleeting of meetings that, in the fullness of time, turn out to be the most noteworthy.‘One on One’ examines the curious nature of different types of meeting, from the oddity of meetings with the Royal Family (who start giggling during a recital by TS Eliot) to those often perilous meetings between old and young (Gladstone terrifying the teenage Bertrand Russell) and between young and old (the 23 year old Sarah Miles having her leg squeezed by the nonagenarian Bertrand Russell), and our contemporary random encounters on television (George Galloway meeting Michael Barrymore on Celebrity Big Brother).Ingenious in its construction, witty in its narration, panoramic in its breadth, ‘One on One’ is a wholly original book.

Craig Brown

One on One

Dedication

For Frances

Epigraph

Tossed upon ocean waters,

Two wooden logs meet;

Soon a wave will part them,

And never again will they touch.

Just so are we; our meetings

Are momentary, my child.

Another force directs us,

So blame no fault of man.

Ga Di Madgulkar

We have as many personalities

as there are people who know us.

William James

The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere.

The moment is the only thing that counts.

Jean Cocteau

When Arthur Miller shook my hand I could only think

that this was the hand that had once cupped

the breasts of Marilyn Monroe.

Barry Humphries

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

ONE ON ONE

ADOLF HITLER

JOHN SCOTT-ELLIS

RUDYARD KIPLING

MARK TWAIN

HELEN KELLER

MARTHA GRAHAM

MADONNA

MICHAEL JACKSON

NANCY REAGAN

ANDY WARHOL

JACKIE KENNEDY

HRH QUEEN ELIZABETH II

THE DUKE OF WINDSOR

ELIZABETH TAYLOR

JAMES DEAN

ALEC GUINNESS

EVELYN WAUGH

IGOR STRAVINSKY

WALT DISNEY