Oh, What a Lovely Century: One Man’s Marvellous Adventures in Love, War and High Society by Roderic Fenwick Owen

Description

For fear of growing up like his stiff upper-lipped, disapproving Uncle Dick, Roderic Fenwick Owen survived Eton, Oxford and World War II to become a travel writer, experiencing the varied wonders of the 20th Century’s people and places in that guise.

At the heart of his adventures – which took him from the Arctic to Australia, America to Russia, and a good portion of the places in between – lay his search for love, even if just for the night.

Featuring a stellar cast of celebrities (Eisenhower, Jackson Pollock, Christopher Lee and Sean Connery to name a few), plus ordinary people whose extraordinary stories have lain dormant until now, OH, WHAT A LOVELY CENTURY follows Roddy as he careered through some of the biggest moments of 20th Century history, including experiencing Nazi Germany first-hand in 1939; becoming court poet to the ruler of Abu Dhabi when the oil that would transform the region was discovered; and being part of significant conversations in the Pentagon during the Cold War.

Lyrical, witty and enthrallingly honest, this book is both a highly personal memoir and a marvelous obituary of an ever-changing and now lost world.