Showing results by author "Harry Mount" in All Categories

There are so many Latin phrases in everyday use that often we use them without understanding the background and context within which they were actually used. 'Carpe diem'; 'Stet'; 'Memento mori'; 'Et tu Brute' – examples would fill a book. And often these phrases are also used in English translation: 'The die is cast'; 'crossing the Rubicon'; 'Rome was not built in a day'.

Whether we're aware of it or not, Latin is all around us. Consider the sayings in everyday use: alter ego, ad nauseam, caveat emptor, modus operandi, per se, and, of course, the ever-popular e pluribus unum. Even more abundant are words derived from Latin roots: arena (from harena, meaning "sand"), auditorium ("a place of audience"), stadium (a running track)...and those are just the theatrical ones! It's inescapable.

The King and I tells the story of Harry Mount's fixation with Elvis over 35 years; how it changed from mild interest as a child, via self-mocking adolescent fandom to full-blown obsession at university, before settling into relatively sane reverence today. What happens to our teenage obsessions when we grow up? How do they help - or harm - us? In this moving, funny memoir, Harry Mount reveals how Elvis released him from the bookish shyness of his sheltered childhood, and provided a magical escape route from his conventional, cloistered public school background.