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“... as a child with my grandmother in Rindge, New Hampshire, in the state’s rural south-western corner. I felt more or less, though not necessarily happily, at home in this crowd – as if it were a family gathering of my more aggressive cousins or a high school reunion to which only the former schoolyard bullies had been invited along with a few of their ...”

“... the present. The apocalyptic aspects of science, with the next breakthrough just around the corner, may add to the distortion by a more general undervaluation of the past. And the distortion is often sealed by an appeal to history for corroboration of fashionable stereotypes of scientific method, the classic discoveries having been made by ‘prepared ...”

“... still spattered with bullet holes from the civil war, the windows missing their glass. Around the corner on the buzzy rue Hamra the bars and shops blazed with light and music, but rue Kantari, site of one of the most famous acts of the Cold War, was dark. On the night of 23 January 1963, during a fierce rainstorm, Philby walked down the five flights of stairs ...”

“... elections approached, worried liberals were warning that an American theocracy was just around the corner. Then things started to unravel. When Americans went to the polls last November, both branches of Congress fell to the Democrats and the Republicans lost control of the House for the first time since Newt Gingrich’s triumph in 1994. Some of the religious ...”

“... to an invisible art manifestation: Lost Memories by Emma Matthews. ‘Very elegant, very Paul Klee,’ the punters say. Rusting English metal, from somewhere down the A13, near Rainham Marshes, rendered as a grid of delicately balanced reds and pinks, with just enough green to cancel the headache. This, so often, is how it works; synergy, they call ...”

“... the early years of their marriage, was benign compared to the one she published ten years later: Paul Ivory, the playwright with whom Caroline Bell has a long and self-destructive affair in The Transit of Venus. Ivory is introduced as ‘a man of promise’, which should immediately alert us. Also, he wears espadrilles. Something is awry in this man for whom ...”

“... sexual intercourse, Stopesian contraceptive devices, cheap silken undergarments, pick-ups in Lyons Corner Houses. There is much worldly wisdom along the lines of: ‘All attractive girls should be seduced and married. They trouble a man less and listen to his conversation.’ Stained Radiance features three flatmate heroines and four heroes all linked by loose ...”

“... My own shares are down badly after that slip on the Channel Tunnel. She was not going to keep Paul (Channon) on. Bernard had the briefing to hand ... Bruce was dismissive about Tristan, ‘not up to it’; and Gow, ‘can’t get a grip on things’. I don’t like this. These are my friends, I mean my close friends. Then he made matters worse by saying ...”

“... opposition, it was this fear that drove a motley crew of deputies – including Bertrand Barère, Paul Barras, Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, Lazare Carnot and Jean-Lambert Tallien – to topple him. They did so by means of a hasty coup on 9 Thermidor, the day after his speech. The key events are well known. Robespierre’s ...”

“... election night​ , almost as soon as it was clear that the unthinkable had become a cold reality, Paul Krugman asked in the New York Times whether the US was now a failed state. Political scientists who normally study American democracy in splendid isolation are starting to turn their attention to Africa and Latin America. They want to know what happens when ...”

“... a local worthy who had applied for the post of stamp collector, hanging on a venerable elm at the corner of Essex and Orange Streets. In case anybody failed to get the message, the effigy had on its right sleeve the initials AO, and on its left a ditty: ‘What greater glory can New England see/Than stamp men hanging from a tree.’ That evening the Boston ...”

“... small picture with a blazing message. The viewpoint is that of one seated on the bare floor in the corner of an attic studio with crumbling plaster walls. On the right, in shadow, is the doorway. In the centre, with its back to us, is an enormous easel with a picture propped on it. On the left, barely half the height of the easel, stands the painter, brush and ...”

“... tasty venue? ‘Upstairs at the Garage’, an evening of sponsored disobedience, just off Highbury Corner. The mob of liggers sweating in this toilet-box, slopping up orthodox doses of the black stuff, are confronted by an ironic account of the Class Warrior on the toot. And some of them don’t like it, they are there for the sounds, the freeform ...”

“... the adventurous, the polyglot, the pugilist, the dodgy lover has been thrown into an unregarded corner. Up in Valhalla with his favourite old Norsemen, he will not be taking much account of this neglect. Like many a fan, David Williams is inclined to patronise his hero, assuming an instinctive, intuitive understanding of his true nature, and encouraging ...”

“... Mrs Morel in Sons and Lovers – is rather more efficiently handled but is still far from expert. Paul overdoses his mother’s milk with her whole prescription of morphia tablets, which he and his sister have pulverised. Mrs Morel evidently guesses why her night-time drink is so bitter, but drinks nevertheless. This is in line with the drill laid down in ...”