Search Results

“... programme of middle-income housing just as the federal government was promoting suburbanisation by means of home loans, highway construction and mortgage insurance, and in the two decades after 1945 unions built nearly 40,000 co-operative apartments. Central to this postwar Popular Front culture was the Communist Party, a significant presence in the city’s ...”

“... a good title. The word does not appear in the Chambers Dictionary but Webster’s tells us that it means ragweed in Britain, and knapweed, blueweed or blue vervain in the United States. We associate the word ‘weed’ with something contemptible, to be got rid of: but in America it also suggests toughness and freedom – so that they can say ‘militarism is ...”

“... Will not reign long as Amnesty’s new chief. Placed under stress he has been known to warp, As David Astor points out with some grief. I must say that Thorpe’s nerve gives cause to gawp. A decent silence should not be so brief. One does feel he might wear more sober togs And do things quietly in aid of dogs. Marcus Aurelius said there’s an age ...”

“... OWN PRIVATE DICTATOR-MUZZLER. POSITIVELY NO CONNECTION WITH ANY OTHER ESTABLISHMENT. By this means Low made the attempt to censor him a target for satire, and cunningly enlisted his readers in his defence. These examples illustrate a further aspect of Low’s humour: his generous use of words, not merely as captions but as a complete running ...”

“... their defenders ought to lean over backwards to be simple, clear and explicit. Donald Davidson and David Pears have recently made pioneering attempts to render elements of Freud’s theory in terms comprehensible to analytical philosophers and empirical psychologists. Instead of following their lead, Wollheim retreats to the more comfortable procedure of ...”

“... claiming a kind of coincidence with it’. The novel, he says, is ‘social intercourse by other means’. The same conviction is enforced in Bayley’s Selected Essays, a gathering of his fairly recent writings. The writers he deals with, except for Pushkin, are those whose work has happened to come up for review: a new collection, a biography, a ...”

“... Clennell Wilkinson, the pompous and plagiaristic Ellis Roberts. And there were writers who, like David Garnett, simply couldn’t manage the world of journalistic deadlines. Today, leftish journals face an ever-widening gulf between the concerns of ‘cultural politics’ and the day-to-day agenda of professional politicians, which remains overwhelmingly ...”

“... patrician of next-century information capitalism, Gates has been talking to everyone, including David Letterman, about what the future – guided by Microsoft, its controlling partner – has in store. With his transformation into a Third Wave Pollyanna, Chairman Bill is sounding remarkably like Speaker Newt, and his new book The Road Ahead has much in ...”

“... Ayacucho, one of the most backward and isolated towns of the Peruvian Andes, whose name in Quechua means ‘Corner of the Dead’, in memory of those who fell in 1824 in the decisive battle between Bolivar’s forces, under Sucre, and those loyal to the Spanish Crown. Thus Ayacucho can be considered the birthplace of the modern Peruvian state, and may yet ...”

“... haunted demeanour of a beaten man. The desperate logic of America’s sound-bite democracy means that between now and polling day Bush might try to revive his flagging popularity by resuming military strikes against the man he now refers to as the ‘Merchant of Death’. But if American lives were to be lost as a consequence, the electoral damage ...”

“... his lodge. The club, a body turned in on itself and having its own particular rules, provided a means of cementing a society divided by the rage of party. Is it too fanciful to see Mr Spectator’s Club as a model for Masonry? Addison, a staunch Whig, showed how shared conviviality – tempered at times with a mild raillery – could bind such opposites as ...”

“... Hall in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20). Irving’s was the first, and by no means the last, American contribution to the idealisation of the English country house. He tells us that the architecture and furnishings of Bracebridge Hall had not been altered since the Restoration and that its owner regretted that he had not been born two ...”

“... The folds of gold satin fall elegantly around the body and the balance of Van Dyck’s composition means our gaze is drawn to the black sash tied just off-centre at the queen’s waist; crucially, below that, her hands are joined in a cradling gesture over her abdomen. She seems to offer her womb to the viewer: a royal pregnancy is after all a public ...”

“... Barry Hannah, Diane Williams and Mary Robison.One of the best accounts of Lish’s influence is in David Leavitt’s roman à clef Martin Bauman; Or, a Sure Thing. He appears in the first paragraph of the first chapter disguised as Stanley Flint, a creative writing teacher and human resources nightmare:Wild rumours circulated about this seminar. It was said ...”

“... he was a child (we are told), but had scant interest in what he might do with it should he get it. David Cameron explained that he wanted to be prime minister ‘because I think I’d be good at it’, but this is something Johnson has never maintained about himself. The evidence to the contrary is already accumulating rapidly. And yet, there he ...”