Asa Briggs was a historian of class history, so he felt obligated to bring in his driver. That's the English class thing that is much weaker now. Lawrence Osborne More Quotes by Lawrence Osborne More Quotes From Lawrence Osborne I read Gide's 'The Immoralist' over and over as a teenager. I was obsessed with it. It's written with such simplicity and dread, and the desert, the shabby colonial world, is brought right into your consciousness without being over-explained. Lawrence Osborne your desert simplicity world My mother sent me and my sisters to Italy every year for language school, so I spent a lot of my teenage years in Florence and Rome. After university I went to Harvard for a year, dropped out, and then went to Paris, where I ended up staying 10 years. It's different from being American: If you're British, you're expected to live at the far corners. Lawrence Osborne me you mother school I grew up in the small town of Haywards Heath, south of London. Lawrence Osborne small up small-town london My parents were bookish, very musical, but otherwise uninvolved in the arts or the academic world. Lawrence Osborne otherwise parents academic world The drinker is a Dionysiac, a dancer who sits still, a mocker. He doesn't need your seriousness or your regard. He just needs a little quiet music and a gentle freedom from priests. Lawrence Osborne your music freedom quiet