Life
Schapiro was born in Riga, Latvia (part of Imperial Russia at that time) into a prosperous family of Jewish traders which left at the time of the Russian Revolution when he was eight years old, and soon settled in England. He was educated at Clifton College in England and at various universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris.
After graduating, Boris joined the family horse trading and meat business. He worked there until, in his forties, he decided to retire and capitalise on his love of gambling by becoming the banker of a baccarat syndicate at Crockford's, the gaming club in London. During World War II Schapiro, who was fluent in Russian, German and French, put these linguistic skills to use in the Army Intelligence Corps.
Schapiro had an early marriage to a Russian woman. He later married a second time, to Helen, in 1970.
Read more about this topic: Boris Schapiro
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)