Marlene Wagman-Geller

The British poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote, “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love.” A conqueror whose empress conquered his heart proved that in the winter old men’s hearts also turn to love.

      History acknowledges that France’s most acclaimed general possessed the ambition of the Scottish general Macbeth. What is less well known is Napoleon Bonaparte also possessed the romantic nature of Romeo, the jealousy of Othello.

The British poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote, “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love.” A conqueror whose empress conquered his heart proved that in the winter old men’s hearts also turn to love.

      History acknowledges that France’s most acclaimed general possessed the ambition of the Scottish general Macbeth. What is less well known is Napoleon Bonaparte also possessed the romantic nature of Romeo, the jealousy of Othello.

If the voices submerged in the shadows of the Holocaust could speak they would whisper of when the line separating man from beasts blurred in the atrocities the Nazis committed. Yet,despite the horrors, a love story blossomed. Simon Wiesenthal and a woman from his town shared lives which rivaled the harrowing twists of a Stephen King plot.

The girl with the dragon tattoo is as iconic as the boy-wizard with the glasses, and the Swedish author has become as famous as the British. However, while J.K. Rowling basks in her billions, Stieg Larsson’s life-and that of his muse- took a more novel-worthy twist.

“I do not sing politics. I merely sing the truth.”

    Nelson Mandela, who endured twenty-seven years in South Africa’s brutal Robben Island, was instrumental in shaking off the yoke of apartheid. For his life-long arm-wrestle against the Afrikaner regime, he became a beloved icon, the father of his people. Another freedom fighter against colonialism was the woman known by the epithet, “Mama Africa.” 

          A tongue twister popularized in the 2010 film, The King’s Speech, “I have a sieve full of sifted thistles and a sieve full of unsifted thistles, because I am a thistle sifter.” A century earlier, a popular tongue-twister was, “She sells seashells by the seashore.” While most assume ‘she’ was merely an anonymous pronoun, it refers to Mary Anning.