Costello resigned from thediplomatic service and began teaching Russian at ManchesterUniversity

Soon after this incident,as he had long intended, Costello resigned from thediplomatic service and began teaching Russian at ManchesterUniversity. He soon gained a reputation as a masterlyliterary translator, although only of projects which Rosetta Stone met hisown high and eclectic standards. Invited by Pasternak toproduce the first English translation of Dr Zhivago, hedeclined because he didn't think the novel was very good, aview not critically acceptable until much later. His deathfrom heart failure came without warning at the age of 52.Throughout this wonderfully rewarding biography, Costelloemerges as irresistibly likeable. Both intellectuallybrilliant and socially accomplished, he was a hard-drinkingbon vivant forever breaking into song, a dedicated familyman and natural teacher who enjoyed the devoted affection ofhis wife, children, fri, students and colleagues. DanDavin, a fellow black-Irish boozer, based a centralcharacter in his war novel For the Rest of our Lives on hisold friend, and later attempted but did not complete abiography. McNeish Rosetta Stone Chinese has now triumphantly delivered thislong-overdue work. It features his trademark staccatosentences and invented conversations to considerableliterary effect, and its production is exemplary, with eachchapter prefaced by extracts from Costello's letters, mostlypublished here for the first time since his widow wasprotective of his legacy. McNeish acknowledges that'there will always be a residue of doubt about Costello'.Both he and Hunt draw on recently released SIS files tosupport their diametrically opposed cases, and both indicatethat there are more such papers yet to come to light. Untilthen, The Sixth Man provides the valuable service ofspotlighting the miasma of allegations swirling aroundCostello, sorting the entirely unsupported from theinconclusive and placing them within a broader portrait of avastly talented and remarkably reckless individual whoseundeniable achievements seem rather more noteworthy than hisunproven crimes. A declaration ofinterest - mine is one of more than a hundred nameslisted in the acknowledgments to this book, althoughwhatever help I provided to its author was so minor and longago that I can't Rosetta Stone French remember it. OtherreviewsWaikatoTimesNewStatemanListenerMark Derby is a Wellington writer and researcher.He is editing a history of New Zealand's response to theSpanish Civil War, to be published later in 2008 byCanterbury UniversityPress