“... other, and the points at which the need is and is not symmetrical, are at the heart of the plot of David Malouf’s (in two senses) exemplary novel. It answers, in almost Tolstoyan terms, questions about how we should, and do, lead the lives we are given. Returning from the war, from the prison camps on the Burma railway where life was cheap, Digger looks ...”

“... the Macmillan Modern Novelists Series sternly fixed on ‘close examination of important texts’, David Dowling’s study sets out ‘to foreground the aspect of Faulkner’s language play’, which, he roundly asserts, ‘takes us more surely than the American South, symbolism, Gothicism or psychology to the heart of Faulkner’s genius’. He demonstrates ...”

“... Poetry anthologies are now expected to make holy war; but what to do with The New Poetry, which strives so earnestly to turn its trumpet-majors into angels? The 55 poets collected here are, it seems, seraphs of a benevolent novelty, somehow singing their good news at once uniquely and in shimmering unison. ‘A multicultural society,’ write the editors in their introduction, ‘challenges the very idea of a centre, and produces pluralism of poetic voice ...”

“... Excalibur perhaps, links up the parts of the novel and is symbolic in its action. A Welshman, David Jones, runs away to sea, survives the sinking of the Titanic, becomes a cook in New York, marries Ludmilla, the daughter of his Russian employer, returns to Wales and the First World War. He is in Ireland during the Rebellion and, because he is posted as ...”

“... of it to heel, especially in the province of Mosul, where the Kurdish separatists took up arms. David Omissi has told the story in Air Power and Colonial Control of how the battle for the separate identity of the RAF was won on the bombing fields of Iraq, with Lord Trenchard, the top airman, joining forces with Winston Churchill to argue that there was no ...”

“... chosen policy. The key event here is the Richard Wilson exhibition of 1982-3, organised by David Solkin, whose thoughtful and carefully researched catalogue attempted to situate Wilson’s landscapes in a range of historical contexts including the moral and political ideas and ideals attached to the ownership of land in the 18th century. Editorials in ...”

“... see page 752, you ‘mad sod’; ‘Hi, John,’ see page 563, you ‘arse-faced trendy’; ‘Hi, David,’ see page 266, you ‘deaf cunt’, and so on. Less succinct salutations will be discovered by the likes of Donald Davie (‘droning out his tosh’), Ted Hughes (‘boring old monolith, no good at all – not a single solitary bit of good’) and ...”

“... in August 1914 that his colleagues were in no position to query them. The fact remains that, as David French recently wrote in British Economic and Strategic Planning, 1905-1915: ‘Within a few days of becoming Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener was responsible for one of the most complete and far-reaching reversals of policy of the whole war. In ...”

“... eyes distinctly narrowed to blue expressionless flecks by a sudden onrush of light. Mister Punch, David Harsent’s first collection since Dreams of the Dead (1977), strikes me as a transitional book. The practice of ascribing a multitude of experiences to one figure has been vigorously maintained, especially by John Berryman in Dream Songs, though in that ...”

“... purpose is fulfilled it will surely give rise to yet another. In God stand up for bastards (1973) David Leitch addressed the natural mother who had given him away at birth, entreating her to come forward. And she did. They met and became friends. She died, whereupon a sister he had never known rang him up. They met and became friends. A second sister was ...”

“... in responding to the challenge. Writing in the last issue of this review, the American philosopher David Hoy gives courteous attention to Hartman’s redemptive strategy. But he remains sceptical about Derrida’s influence and, in the last resort, dismissive of his claims. For him, Derrida practises a ‘recognisable genre’, that of bringing philosophy to ...”

“... Web of Corruption, which tells the story of John Poulson and T. Dan Smith. Raymond Fitzwalter and David Taylor took eight years to research and write their analysis of the most far-reaching corruption trial of this century. The opening summary is startling. Of those prosecuted in connection with Poulson 21 were convicted on corruption charges. There were ...”

“... toward its present form. McDowell is a Senior Fellow of Trinity and a well-known historian. David Webb is a Fellow Emeritus of the College and Honorary Professor of Systematic Botany. ‘Virtue and religion’ meant, of course, Anglicanism. The Fellows of Trinity were required to take an oath and, in most cases, to take Anglican orders. Undergraduates ...”

“... These books are both attempts, by oblique routes, to explain major events in English history: in one case the Civil War, and in the other the Reformation. That, however, is where the resemblance between them ends: for the rest, it would be hard to find a more extreme contrast in historical methods. Professor Underdown, as he makes clear in his preface, sees no virtue in attempts at explanation of the Civil War which concentrate on political events at the centre ...”

“... is the heroine. Miss Oates can make one care about Marya’s situation, but not about Marya. David Leavitt’s The Lost Language of Cranes is a coming-out novel. Its story is basically simple, but artistically risky. Twenty-five-year-old Philip Benjamin brings himself to tell his parents, Owen and Rose, that he is a homosexual. Owen, the father, then ...”