Giacomo Casanova may not have been a tinker or a tailor, but he was briefly a soldier and certainly a spy, not to mention a trainee cleric, a diplomat, entrepreneur, musician, cabbalist and, of course, lover, too.
Even non-French speakers can get lost in the six iconic themes of Paris cinema: bistros, the Eiffel Tower, rooftops, chases, Parisians and, of course, lovers.
Of course, the lover didn't know he had a girlfriend and the girlfriend didn't know he had a lover.
He was, of course, the lover of the Russian queen (and remember, in 1916 it wasn't so easy to shag a member of the royal family), Russia's greatest love machine and a cat that really was gone.
Of course, clivia lovers are looking for a red clivia -- just as rose lovers dream of a blue rose.
Of course, credit lovers also sulk when a creditor won't take that chance.
Opera direction is a profoundly error-prone medium, and, of course, opera-lovers are a contentious lot.
There are, of course, opera-lovers for whom translation represents a betrayal of the intentions of the work's creators, though I'm not aware of any composer or librettist ever having expressed such a view.
Not only is it a gorgeous word for the mouth to shape and sound out, but it conjures all kinds of hazardous historical excitement before the exposure of street lighting and iPhone torches – bandits on the highway, yellow-eyed long-clawed creatures stalking their prey, and, of course, lyrical lovers roamin' in the illicit murk.
"Our children's departments have always been the heart of our bookshops, for there, of course, book lovers are made," said James Daunt, Managing Director of Waterstones.
