Talk:Harry Johnston
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The suggestion that Harry Johnston might be the model for Todd in Evelyn Waugh's Handful of Dust seems odd. Waugh said that he'd met an old man in the Latin American outback who inspired Todd -- Waugh realized the man could easily take him prisoner and nobody would ever know. Certainly, Todd is nothing like Harry Johnston. Todd is a crazy recluse who lives in the back of beyond. Obviously, he couldn't read (that's why he kept Tony Last prisoner -- so he could read Dickens to him). (His name, by the way, sounds the same as the German word for Dead - Tod; which some have suggested is its significance). Harry Johnston was an extraordinarily civilized man. He was a big Dickens fan, it's true, but in his retirement he lived in Kent (or somewhere close to London) and wrote books.
