Stanford, Calif.
The British historian Robert Conquest was 62 when he married for a fourth time, in December 1979. His Texan bride, Liddie Neece, was exactly half his age. Conquest’s bosom pals, the novelist Kingsley Amis and the poet Philip Larkin, wrote to each other about the event. “What about old Bobbo marrying again, eh,” a bemused Amis wrote to Larkin. “One for the road, he says. From the way Liddie’s on to him already it should last about 18 months.”
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