TIMES ONLINE: “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. That she was brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.”
So began Love Story, by Erich Segal, who has died at the age of 72.
A short, emotionally direct novel about a rich Harvard student who falls for a working-class beauty despite the disapproval of his family, Love Story captivated its readers as readily as it reduced them to tears.
The book was America’s bestselling novel in 1970, quickly becoming a film that topped the box-office lists in 1971 and introduced the world to the motto: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” Segal, the son of a Brooklyn rabbi, was a young Yale Classics professor at the time and he remained in academia despite the success of Love Story. Students that he tutored included George W. Bush and Al Gore. Segal later moved to Britain, where he was a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. >>> Chris Smyth and Mary Bowers | Wednesday, January 20, 2010
