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“... out: ‘Look at me! … Don’t you think I’m beautiful?’ In fact, she thought he looked like Donald Duck, and insisted he put his clothes on and take her to meet André Breton. ‘There has only been one really good edition of anything that Shakespeare wrote,’ he told the writer Ruthven Todd, ‘and that is an edition of Venus and Adonis that I did ...”

“... is no longer there except as an intuition or perhaps a fiction: Shelley charms the star into what Thomas Hardy – a great admirer though a very different sort of poet – once called ‘existlessness’. And, to add to the sense of abstraction, this is a metaphor for a metaphor, since Shelley is likening the dwindling star to the soaring skylark, a bird ...”

“... difficulty of finding servants, staying with Max Beerbohm, the Test series, his first meeting with Thomas Hardy, the shortcomings of his wife/son/daughter-in-law, his neglect by the critics – this last a recurring theme. ‘They don’t understand what a talent I have for light verse.’ He had no pudeur about expressing his resentments or his ...”

“... the most gifted editor in television. He hunted down giants for Monitor – Henry Moore, Sir Thomas Beecham, E.M. Forster, Max Ernst, Robert Graves. He had the fine, if expensive idea of filming the artist or administrator in a setting germane to his or her work. They went to Athens to profile Katina Paxinou, to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to ...”

“... bright with insiderism as he treks around Fitzrovia with Tambimuttu, Julian Maclaren-Ross, Dylan Thomas and the gang. ‘Senses were heightened, perceptions changed, new visions possible,’ he burbles, but even he finds it hard to convince himself that this heady atmosphere produced much in the way of even half-decent poetry and prose. Sinclair’s critical ...”

“... hands of a Popish Malignant Company.’ At Putney in the winter of 1647, Cromwell had repudiated Thomas Harrison’s demand that the king be put on trial. But whatever its motivation – and there is no need to fasten on any single motive – the eventual execution enabled Cromwell and Ireton to stamp out the movement for democracy in the army and to ...”

“... environment than ours. Peter was, I think, a political scientist; there were early editions of Thomas Hobbes on the shelves. Ilse typed up John Beaglehole’s edition of Cook’s journals. Only occasionally did my father seem to feel that the refugees might have been a little impatient with provincial life in the South Pacific. My friend Graham Percy (who ...”

“... and gives the novel a starred review, praising its ‘charming’ recombination of the styles of Thomas Pynchon and Boris Vian and its ‘tender’, ‘childlike’ depiction of heterosexual love. Jack figures the Kirkus reviewer must be a woman, probably studying French, unduly influenced by Will’s touched-up author photo. Then comes a review in the New ...”

“... The racism​ , xenophobia and violence of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is widely seen as an aberration, as if reasoned debate had been the default mode of American politics. But precursors to Trump do exist, candidates who struck electoral gold by appealing to exaggerated fears, real grievances and visceral prejudices ...”

“... if at all, in the pages of the Observer. It is to the credit of the still surviving editor, Donald Trelford, that he has resisted that pressure, even though he is not said to be among O’Brien’s most ardent admirers. Tiny, Sir James and Rupert are just a few of the many object lessons in recent years as to the dangers inherent in the honourable ...”

“... order – Wilfrid Sellars, J.J.C. Smart, David Armstrong, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, Donald Davidson, Ruth Millikan, Patricia and Paul Churchland – one gets a clear sense of a developing consensus. There is increasing agreement about which moves will and won’t work, which strategies are dead and which still alive. Bad questions have been ...”

“... of incipient talent – his classmates included Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery and Donald Hall – Creeley felt discouraged and alone. ‘My eager thirst for knowledge, almost Jude-the-Obscurian in its innocence, was all but shut down by the sardonic stance of my elders,’ he recalled. He left college in 1944 for non-combatant service, driving ...”

“... and adapting them for the silver screen. As the song says: ‘Go out and try your luck/You may be Donald Duck/Hooray for Hollywood.’ America had always been a percentage play, and Hollywood was the fabulous embodiment of the nation’s faith in pluck and luck. To a society that fancied itself a Redeemer Nation, the bonanza of stars, paydays and lush life ...”

“... Wisely, he navigates away from the Guy himself, understanding that the best you can do with Donald Trump is to sound almost as weird as he does. The closest we get is in ‘Love Letter’, a story that takes the form of a letter from a ‘GPa’ about the world he has made for his grandson: ‘It did not seem (and please destroy this letter after you ...”

“... One of the few​ facts of American history of which Donald Trump appears to be aware is that George Washington owned slaves. Trump mentioned this in 2017 as one reason for his opposition to the removal of the monuments to Confederate generals that dot the southern landscape. In Trump’s view owning slaves probably enhances Washington’s reputation: like him, the first president knew how to make a buck ...”