Edward Spears - Tragedy of His Life

Tragedy of His Life

In the foreword to Fulfilment of a Mission, the account by Spears of his service in the Levant, John Terraine writes, of 'the tragedy of his life'. By this he meant that someone who should have been a warm friend of de Gaulle had become an intractable and spiteful enemy. His boyhood had been spent in France. He was happy in France, he liked the spirit of the people. He liked the sailors of Brittany and the peasants of Burgundy. He understood their wit. It amused him to talk to them and to be with them. It had been a very bitter experience to find himself opposed and having to oppose French policy so often. That, he said, had been the tragedy of his life. Terraine comments further, "If Mr Graham Greene had not already made good use of it, the title of Fulfilment of a Mission might just as well have been, The End of an Affair."

Read more about this topic:  Edward Spears

Famous quotes containing the words tragedy of, tragedy and/or life:

    The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.
    Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)

    We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.
    Jane Addams (1860–1935)

    You want to prepare your child to think as he gets older. You want him to be critical in his judgments. Teaching a child, by your example, that there’s never any room for negotiating or making choices in life may suggest that you expect blind obedience—but it won’t help him in the long run to be discriminating in choices and thinking.
    Lawrence Balter (20th century)