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“... The continuing American blindness to Vietnam itself, in this and many other instances, notably Michael Cimino’s film The Deer Hunter (1978), can be astonishing, but the myth also shows some genuine self-understanding. Apocalypse Now, in particular, is full of the sense that Americans exported whole chunks of their culture to Vietnam and discovered its ...”

“... strategy has to deliver; while two treatments of Caravaggio, by Andrew Graham-Dixon and by Michael Fried, come at that painter’s place in history from wildly disparate angles. Spear, Sohm and their five coauthors investigate five 17th-century urban art worlds. Those of Florence and Venice are so downbeat they would be the despair of most ...”

“... him, and also knows the rest of the band don’t want to know. His job is to keep them on the straight and narrow, so they can be more outrageous and wild and creative and artistic, and they despise him for it, or worse still forget he’s even there. Years on, bass players reflect on how the whole thing was thrown back in their face: sacked for being too ...”

“... content in poetry is not for the reader a literary matter, and that style should slip the content straight down the reader’s throat, for content is what matters most. This may beg a lot more questions, but except to critics it is clear enough. When W.H. Davies says he saw the wind dragging the corn by her golden hair into a dark wood, the startling and ...”

“... more spectacular instances of 19th-century Sapphic impersonation. First is the strange case of ‘Michael Field’: a pair of homosexual female lovers, aunt and niece, whose jointly-authored, Sapphically-inspired verses in Long Ago (1889) set the stage for later lesbian appropriations of the poet. Second up is Swinburne, whose outrageously sado-masochistic ...”

“... It can intervene in decisions that involve the awarding of a goal or a penalty, the issuing of a straight red card, or a case of mistaken identity. The IFAB guidelines state that VAR ‘may assist the referee only in the event of a “clear and obvious error” or “serious missed incident”’ and that it must not be seen to ‘re-referee’ the game. The ...”

“... was encountered in the flesh, was a place, a landscape, a father, a teacher. De Quincey did not go straight to the Lake District, it is true, but it was only a question of when. His metropolitan escapades, which came to form a central part of the Confessions, were, in every way, a prelude. Like Freud circling Rome before deciding he could at last enter the ...”

“... at the time the multi-millionaire Zweig was residing in Portland Place), and then it’s straight back to discussion of the revolution.Further west, in Princeton, or much further, in Pacific Palisades, Thomas Mann and his family spent diverting evenings – this in 1939 – debating which of Zweig, Ludwig, Feuchtwanger and Remarque was the worst ...”

“... pie … We are setting a poem about Orestes to electronic sound. We’re taking the sentiment straight, no wit, no discords. We know that however well we succeed, fifty ‘experts’ (people who acquire theoretical knowledge without using it) will pour cold water on the result. And then five years later, grudgingly, and ten years later, publicly, stuff ...”

“... the telling, through the style. The medium is a markedly individual one that moves easily from straight, even plodding, narrative to bold transitions, ellipses, assimilations. As one reads this novel, the lurking question must be: what do these miscellaneous experiences, these townscapes, these conversations, these sexual involvements add up to? What do ...”

“... supermarket stick-up. It flirts with another threadbare cliché (‘the gang that couldn’t shoot straight’) in the inept band of villains who make up the dramatis personae. In the forefront is Stanley Sinkiewicz, a 71-year-old retiree from Ford’s Baton Rouge assembly plant who is living out his last years in Riviera Beach, Florida. Stanley is the last of ...”

“... he swaggers a little and swings the left arm, he has the slightest inclination to stoop, but is straight, smart, active and gentlemanly-looking; his age is about 30 years.’ Such was the picture of the young Michael Davitt, Fenian suspect, produced by the police detective who was watching him in 1869. (In fact, he was ...”

“... middle-aged rock music critic), issued an interesting warning. Talking about the popularity of straight, commercial pop music (‘Sugar, Sugar, Honey, Honey’), and the often dire pretensions of progressive, underground music (‘You’re two Thousand Light Years from Home’), he noticed that the mumsy commercial stuff ‘is crap, but the people are ...”

“... idea of a modern politician turning down such a soundbite opportunity makes one sigh. Similarly, Michael Jago reproduces part of an interview with Honor Balfour in 1967: Balfour: What was the greatest achievement of the Labour government? Attlee: Indian independence. Balfour: What was the greatest problem you faced? Attlee: Russia. Balfour: What was the ...”

“... Mitt Romney has now joined Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale in the political void that awaits any rejected American presidential nominee who doesn’t care to linger into senatorial senescence. Dole appeared in adverts for Viagra. Dukakis has been a public transport activist. Mondale, in 2002, at the age of 74, ran an 11-day campaign for his old Minnesota Senate seat after Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash ...”