Note: …and now for something completely different! As in: it's crack. Oh lord, is it ever crack.
I (sincerely) apologize in advance. *runs away to hide*
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JOHN HOST: Welcome back to the show! My guest tonight is an author and historian. Her latest book is The Emperor's Boy: The Extraordinary Life of Deryn Sharp. Please welcome Mary Sue Scribner!
[APPLAUSE]
HOST: Hi, have a seat. Nice to meet you.
SCRIBNER: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
HOST: So this book.
SCRIBNER: Yes.
HOST: It's about a woman.
SCRIBNER: Yes.
HOST: And yet it's called The Emperor's Boy. Uh… explain that one for us?
[LAUGHTER]
HOST: Because she, uh, Deryn Sharp – she is the "boy" in the title, if I'm not mistaken.
SCRIBNER: [LAUGHTER] Well, when she was fifteen, in 1914 – just barely fifteen – she joined the British Air Service as, um, as Dylan Sharp. And so later, when she was with the emperor –
HOST: The last emperor of Austria-Hungary. Alek – Aleksandar I.
SCRIBNER: Right. So people referred to her – derogatively, it was a very big scandal – as his boy.
HOST: One of many nicknames for her, according to the book.
SCRIBNER: Oh yes. One of the nicer ones.
HOST: One of the only ones you could use as a book title without making your publishers' heads explode.
SCRIBNER: [LAUGHTER] That's true, actually!
HOST: Which, and don't tell anyone I said this, would be an okay side effect. If you ask me. What was your favorite nickname? And don't worry about offending the audience – they don't understand what're popularly called, uh, "the big words."
[APPLAUSE, LAUGHTER]
SCRIBNER: My favorite, I think… "that flying whore".
HOST: That's nice. Very Gilded Age and genteel. "Flying whore." I wonder if she and the Flying Nun ever, you know, duked it out.
SCRIBNER: [LAUGHTER] I don't… I don't know.
HOST: That didn't turn up during your research.
SCRIBNER: Strangely, no.
HOST: But, to get back to the book, it's just fascinating that someone – someone so important to, uh, contemporary events, someone who was a true pioneer and, uh, a trailblazer, has been almost completely skipped over in the history books.
SCRIBNER: Yes, yes, absolutely.
HOST: You just don't learn about her in school.
SCRIBNER: No, you don't. She wasn't – remember that at the time, more or less everything she did was grossly shocking to the establishment. There were female aviators, absolutely, but you know, women weren't supposed to fight, they certainly weren't – they weren't war heroes… And then she compounded all of that by getting involved with the emperor.
HOST: And she cussed like a motherf***ing sailor, too.
[APPLAUSE, LAUGHTER]
SCRIBNER: She offended a lot of people. And you know, in the textbooks, they just… left her out of the history. Minimized her.
HOST: They cleaned it up. But what was so amazing for me, reading this, was – Sharp was – You know, you have to admire her, just her determination to follow her dreams to the absolute letter.
SCRIBNER: Yes, exactly.
HOST: She didn't care what she had to do to accomplish her goals.
SCRIBNER: No! She was very willing to, um, think outside the box.
HOST: Right. Breaking expectations. Well, that came back to bite her in the ass.
SCRIBNER: It's also what made her so effective in the war.
HOST: Okay, honestly? That blew me away, her record. She saw combat in both World Wars, set what was it, eleven, twelve aviation records before she was thirty -
SCRIBNER: Twelve.
HOST: Yeah! And girlfriend bagged herself an emperor. When she was fifteen and dressed like a boy. Which is actually – what's the word I'm looking for?
SCRIBNER: Romantic?
HOST: No no no, the other one… "Perverted."
[LAUGHTER]
HOST: Not that there's anything wrong with that.
SCRIBNER: They got married, you know.
HOST: I did not know that. You know, you probably should have put that into the book.
[LAUGHTER]
SCRIBNER: I did.
HOST: And what – what chapter would that be in?
SCRIBNER: I think I mention it in the preface.
[LAUGHTER]
HOST: And there go the last shreds of my journalistic pretences.
SCRIBNER: But they did, they got married. Had children and everything. After he abdicated in 1922.
HOST: Tell the, the story about Edward's abdication.
SCRIBNER: Oh, that one. Okay. Well, Aleksandar abdicated, and he and Deryn married, and then they traveled the world for a number of years. And in 1936, when King Edward, in England – when he abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, you know, it sort of brought the Deryn Sharp scandal up again. And so a reporter tracked her down and asked her what she thought of Mrs. Simpson. And she said –
HOST: "Imitation is the sincerest form of motherf***ing flattery."
[LAUGHTER]
SCRIBNER: More or less! Yes. She said, "Luckily only one of us is a perfect sodding bitch, or history would never get us sorted."
HOST: Ouch. That's a – I believe the technical term is "a major burn."
SCRIBNER: Oh yes. And talk about unprintable, at the time.
HOST: Well, it's a fascinating read, and definitely a story that more people should know.
SCRIBNER: Thank you. Wow.
HOST: And that's it. The book is The Emperor's Boy: The Extraordinary Life of Deryn Sharp by Mary Sue Scribner. Look for it in bookstores. Thank you for coming!
[APPLAUSE]
