Richard Burton was extravagantly glamorous, handsome and accomplished. However I’m not talking about the guy who famously gadded about with Liz Taylor. I’m talking about Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS, 1821 -1890, a British adventurer, writer, diplomat, orientalist scholar, spy and soldier, acclaimed for travels and explorations in Asia, Africa and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. This Burton spoke 29 languages with such precision, according to one account, "He stirred the bile of the dons whilst at Oxford by speaking real - that is, Roman - Latin instead of the artificial type peculiar to England and he spoke Greek Romaically, with the accent of Athens, as he had learned it from a Greek merchant at Marseilles, as well as the classical forms”. He was more than even all this.
© 2024 John Oliver
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