“... Minutes later, he picked up a copy of Severnaya Kommuna, the organ of the Petrograd Soviet, and read a rant by Zinoviev in praise of the Party monopoly on power which derided the ‘fallacious democratic liberties demanded by the counter-revolution’. Serge smothered his misgivings – War Communism required many allowances to be made – but he knew how ...”

“... Knussen recognised the affinity, and coupled poems by Trakl and Plath in his Second Symphony, and Peter Maxwell Davies has also set Trakl to music. This new collection is the most substantial so far published in England, and should finally win Trakl wider recognition. Alexander Stillmark’s selection of around 125 poems, including most of the major ones, is ...”

“... and although he cracked, he never broke into madness. The prisoners at Vincennes were free to read and write all they wished, and Sade’s extensive personal library was crucial in preserving the core of his identity. Books further excited the ideas that made sleep elusive. Insomniacs are as big liars as fishermen, but whatever his exaggerations, Sade was ...”

“... the demand for embodied evil. I’m squeamish too, and I found parts of Murderland difficult to read. But the book’s impressively varied perspectives, which shift between geology, history, politics, literature and neurology, give these poisoned, poisonous figures an unexpected breadth of implication. It starts out as psychogeography (pun ...”

“... appeared in a satirical magazine showing him in short pants next to his father. The caption read: ‘I am told, Papa, that the son of a genius is never a genius himself. Therefore, you can’t be a genius!’ Bertolt Brecht wrote: ‘The whole world knows Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann. By the way, who is Thomas Mann?’ When The Magic Mountain ...”

“... one school in Florida restricted access to ‘The Hill We Climb’, the poem Amanda Gorman read at Joe Biden’s inauguration, after a parent complained that it contained ‘hate messages’.DeSantis is an extreme example of the right’s doublethink around free speech. In that sense he is a boon for more moderate Republicans. His legislative ...”

“... courage so that one begins to feel the portrait of Cromwell is as skewed as Robert Bolt’s (or Peter Ackroyd’s) is of More and for the same reason, both men human and therefore venial when embosomed in their respective families. Set against this massive work one’s objections seem petty, and it’s a tribute to the power of the novel that one discusses ...”

“... he kept in a pigskin case. Lisa Bernhardt was his second wife and twenty years his junior. She read and spoke French, English, German and probably Italian, and had ambitions as a writer, but got distracted by talking – ‘she was an extraordinary talker, a storyteller who could make the truth with all its ambiguities come whole’ – and her many ...”

“... Italian neighbourhood. They proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s as places to hang out, maybe read, maybe chat to whomever was around or just people-watch. In this millennium, in cafés frequented by young white people, every customer seems to be silently staring at an Apple product, so that the places look and feel like offices. Even this phase may be on ...”

“... he merely fails to develop a critical idiom consistently different from his poetry. His refusal to read any criticism of his own writings, which Leppmann likens to his refusal to have himself psychoanalysed, is not to be seen as a categorical rejection of all rational-analytical procedures, but as a sign of his determination to choose for himself the ...”

“... on the coast. The visit which was remembered by Jessie Conrad had a purpose. Casement had read Heart of Darkness and he wanted Conrad to support him in the case he was making against atrocities in the Congo. ‘I am glad you read the Heart of D., tho’ of course it’s an awful fudge,’ Conrad had written to ...”

“... Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin as one of the pioneers of gay fiction in America. Williams read ‘The Delicate Prey’ while accompanying Bowles to Tangier on the SS Vulcania in December 1948. ‘It was a stormy crossing, and I stayed in my cabin most of the time,’ Bowles said. I also wrote a story during the crossing, which I called ‘The ...”

“... of exile, a place where he could be a figure of swaggering talent and a marginal actor. Thus when Peter Hall saw MacGowran on stage in London in 1959 he knew immediately what MacGowran was made for on the English stage. He had, Hall decided, ‘the perfect qualities for a Shakespearean clown’ and he invited him to join the Royal Shakespeare Company to play ...”

“... later played down the importance of his partnership with Ronson. In The Man Who Sold the World, Peter Doggett quotes from an interview with Melody Maker at the beginning of 1976 (though you can’t really trust anything Bowie said in that period): ‘I honestly can’t remember Mick that well these days,’ he said. ‘He’s just like any other band member ...”

“... so coolly or callously, and so at odds with what we know of his own quiet lifestyle that led Peter Gay to describe Burckhardt as an intellectual voluptuary. The founders of the new history may have seen a foreshadowing in Burckhardt, but it was Durkheim they modelled themselves on. The latter’s objective approach, which demanded a hard society of hard ...”