“... edited by Geoffrey Parker and Lesley Smith. Thanks particularly to the editors’ introduction and John Eddy’s essay on the effect of sunspots, the debate was pushed in a new direction: climate change and its impact on the food supply and demography now became a central theme. The absence of recorded sunspots and the presence of substantial carbon-14 ...”

“... isn’t convinced by the case for voting for a lesser evil. ‘The suffering’, Noam Chomsky and John Halle wrote in June, that Trump’s ‘extremist policies and attitudes will impose on marginalised and already oppressed populations has a high probability of being significantly greater than that which will result from a Clinton presidency’. My father ...”

“... thing,’ a character reflects. ‘It collapsing without purpose or meaning is quite another.’ John Cole, an ageing bookseller, is one of the last to leave, and gets lost when he finally does, ending up in the grounds of a dilapidated country house whose residents seem to be expecting him. Perry handles his growing sense of dread with considerable ...”

“... given to jokes, even if his poems are often wry:As I sd to myfriend, because I amalways talking, John, Isd, which was not hisname, the darkness sur-rounds us, whatcan we do againstit or else, shall wewhy not, buy a goddamn big car,drive, he sd, forchrist’s sake, lookout where yr going.‘I Know a Man’ was included in Creeley’s first ...”

“... to its Saturday edition in 1984 and setting up an investment advice phone line. All the other major newspapers followed suit, and so did broadcasters. In 1986, Channel 4 launched Moneyspinner, a roadshow that ran for eight series, and featured financial experts touring the country and giving advice. The coverage tended to blur the distinction between ...”

“... the reactions of publishers. Too much, that is, for all except those who regard Paul Scott as a major 20th-century novelist. Of these there must surely be few. Scott’s reputation rests, rightly, I think, on the four novels that make up the ‘Raj Quartet’ and the last short novel Staying on that won the Booker Prize. The two thousand pages of the ‘Raj ...”

“... But why should politics have to do exclusively with change? It is true that only in the occasional major outbreaks like 1549 or 1607 do we encounter anything remotely resembling the class language of modern times, or any serious demands for a change of regime at the top. But politics surely consists of all those matters that concern the public weal, whether of ...”

“... to trial and Leon gets his comeuppance by hounding them so obsessively that he misses out on a major national news story. This story is well-paced, competently told and not without suspense, but it would be silly to pretend that the main interest of the novel lay in its plot. In a proselytising ‘editorial’ column on page two, Stevenson imagines a world ...”

“... three periods: The Early Years (0-6), The Middle Years (6-9), and The Late Years (9 to 11). Its major episodes – the encounter with Edward Penn, aged seven, muralist; Edwin’s doomed love for the sullen Rose Dorn, third-grade femme fatale; Rose’s fiery end; the improbable friendship with Arnold Hasselstrom, inarticulate playground psychopath; the ...”

“... the same way that heart, lungs and other physical organs grow to maturity. And the psycholinguist John Marshall has drawn attention to the resemblance between this ‘new organology’ and aspects of phrenological thinking. The educational psychologist Howard Gardner has refurbished the old idea that there are distinct forms of intellectual ability, not just ...”

“... link between biographer and subject. She imparts no love of Katherine Anne Porter, and this is the major ethical misdemeanour of the book. She often seems to feel that her subject was not much more than a dishy madcap who dropped everything for a new love and wrote as arbitrarily as a peaky Victorian younger daughter might have, or like an unmarriageable young ...”

“... adds: ‘So far as writings in English are concerned, I can claim that I have probably missed no major evidence in Anglo-Saxon and possibly missed no more than a few in the much larger field of Middle English.’ This is a challenge to a reviewer, but one soon finds that what Burrow means is not, as one might think, that he has looked through most of the ...”

“... and what isn’t, the Council’s main concern is of course with cash. Out of office, Norman St John-Stevas would say that government provision for the arts was wholly inadequate: in office, he reduced that provision. Lord Gowrie, better attuned to his party’s mood, was so far from thinking the grant inadequate that he cut it again and encouraged the ...”

“... very cross if you bring it up. It’s all part of the package, along with Pound’s support of Major Douglas’s social credit scheme, and the other cranky detours that blight the Cantos, all mixed in with the gems that make the poem a sprawling, messy marvel. I was already in touch with Davenport when I visited Basil Bunting at his house near Newcastle in ...”

“... with the female lead is offset only by his boundless greed; a blind judge, the famous Sir John Fielding, who is widely believed to have been deceived by the enchanting villainess, despite his legendary reputation for discerning innocence or guilt in the voices of defendants; a rich and gullible Jewish sugar-daddy who attracts hints of anti-semitism; a ...”