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Lead book review

Soldier, poet, lover, spy: just the man to translate Proust

<p class="p1">Jean Findlay's Chasing Lost Time throws new light on the remarkable life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff</p>

16 August 2014

9:00 AM

16 August 2014

9:00 AM

Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator Jean Findlay

Chatto, pp.352, £25, ISBN: 9780701181079

Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff’s Englishing of Proust — widely and immediately agreed to be one of the greatest literary translations of all time — very nearly didn’t happen. Scott Moncrieff only suggested the project to his publisher after they rejected a collection of satirical squibs in verse (sample: ‘Sir Philip Sassoon is the Member for Hythe;/ He is opulent, generous, swarthy and lithe.’).

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