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“... which now encompasses the whole of South African history. He refers, for example, to Dingane’s Day (16 December) as commemorating ‘the Afrikaners’ massacre of Zulus in 1838’. What in fact happened was that, following Dingane’s massacre of the 69 Boers negotiating with him – each man in turn was impaled through the anus and beaten to death – a ...”

“... his name to the NYPD, who at that point were concentrating their efforts on White Plains. On the day the cops picked up Metesky’s Con Ed file (three days after Kelly’s call) the Journal American published another letter from the Mad Bomber, this time giving the exact date of his injury: 5 September 1931. The NYPD hightailed it over to Connecticut, and ...”

“... dialogues with Peter Cook left very little to the imagination, so it’s not unlikely.23 March. Barry Cryer brings a good deal of old-fashioned joy into my life, as I’m sure he does for many others. His phone calls always begin, ‘It’s your stalker,’ after which without introduction he tells his latest joke. This morning’s was told originally by ...”

“... of Edward VII’s gluttony. Edward loved huge amounts of rich food and pigged himself all day, every day, eating quickly and eagerly: even his coronation had to be postponed due to appendicitis brought on by over-eating. His biographer, Sidney Lee, faced with this utter grossness, wrote only that the King-Emperor ...”

“... a message that was coherent, detailed and subversive of public order. I listened a little every day, as I drove to work and back, and I saw what was coming. The talk aimed to delegitimate the president, and it gave promise of an insurrection. A floating army of the angry and resentful were being urged to express contempt for Barack Obama, and to exhibit ...”

“... spending a fortune on speech therapy to fix: ‘I’m not going to spend my whole life wrestling day and night with a fucking stutter when kids are b-b-b-being b-b-b-b-b-bu-bu-bu roasted alive by Lyndon B-b-b-baines b-b-b-bu-bu-burn-’em-up Johnson!’ If Merry’s is the voice of adolescent rebellion, then the Swede’s is its conservative, paternalistic ...”

“... comedy now. Everybody is a comedian. Everything is subversive. And I find that very tiresome.’ Barry Humphries: ‘Everyone is being satirical, everything is a send-up. There’s an infuriating frivolity, cynicism and finally a vacuousness.’ Christopher Booker: ‘Peter Cook once said, back in the 1960s, “Britain is in danger of sinking giggling into ...”

“... exerted his influence from a breezy summer-house on the beach near Cartagena, and left the day-to-day business of government in Bogota to the ultramontane grammarian, schoolteacher, Virgil-translator and polymath Miguel Antonio Caro, who in the course of a long life, legend has it, not only never bothered to see the ...”

“... fox brought? ‘It was a nest of pink newborn mice – all he had found to bring home in a long day’s hunting.’ Rifles and ammunition were never far from hand. ‘We were raised to hunt,’ he says. Indeed, before Camusfeàrna, Maxwell had already had a short-lived and ruinous career running a basking-shark fishery. Raised to hunt, but observant enough ...”

“... a wholly unnatural effect: it’s surrealism, but it’s certainly not Buñuel. Tynan, on his day a finer descriptive reviewer than Gilliatt, is also a warier profile-writer. At his best he does splendidly, but his less-than-best sinks to depths that his reviews surely never plumbed. Among the solecisms, it is interesting to find confirmation of a thesis ...”

“... As long ago as the 1830s, Tocqueville remarked on America’s love of science, and present-day surveys establish not only that 85 per cent of Americans believe that science ‘makes the world a better place’ but that an astonishing 80 per cent endorse Government support for scientific research even when no material benefits are in ...”

“... the beast, from whence she would pluck out the black tumour that was growing there, larger every day. Ursula isn’t the first fictional character to train for a supernaturally revealed task. The hero of John Irving’s novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, for instance, must master a particular basketball shot in order to fulfil his destiny by saving a group of ...”

“... Bakst among her friends. ‘I’m in a complete rut. I lunch and dine with Linda Thomas every day, and between times, call her up on the telephone,’ he wrote to his bosom buddy from Yale, the actor Monty Woolley. ‘She happens to be the most perfect woman in the world and I’m falling so in love with her that I’m attractively triste.’ A banquet of ...”

“... an inspired pairing.3 August, Yorkshire. We put flowers from the garden on Dad’s grave, on the day he died 45 years ago, and I have a vision of the pair of them, Dad in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, Mam in her shiny straw hat, both of them never able to keep their faces straight when being photographed. In the back garden butterflies cluster on the ...”

“... marched at the front, blowing a bugle. Albertina grew increasingly exercised about this, and one day lunged at the man. He was charged with breach of the peace.These days, Cammell Laird is quiet and looks a bit down at heel, but it used to be one of the most important shipyards in Britain; the Mauretania and two aircraft carriers called Ark Royal were built ...”