“... into the alliums, so many of them that the poor plants are bowed under their weight. 30 April-1 May. To Essential Music in Great Chapel Street to record The Uncommon Reader, which Gordon House, former head of drama at BBC Radio, has adapted and is producing. What other readers are like I’ve no idea, but I always feel I am a sound editor’s ...”

“... that surrounded his reputation both in his own day and afterwards, as reflected in the 1962 David Lean biopic, presenting him as the romantic hero – tall, blue-eyed, in flowing robes – he always wanted to be. His failures are familiar to anyone who has taken any serious interest in him, and were only too painfully known to himself. He either led or ...”

“... more classically Arcadian in its subjects and atmosphere, more expansive in its distances. ‘You may walk in Claude’s pictures and count the miles,’ Wilson declared, but to my eye his management of distance is superior to Claude’s, more subtle in its tonal range and aerial perspective. barr01_3618 Gallery The relative qualities of the two painters ...”

“... two are risks that Francophones must assess for themselves. Inside and outside Québec, a majority may come to feel that separation would clear the air and allow each of the ‘founding peoples’ to pursue their destiny unhindered. Once on its own, Québec might have to reconsider its linguistic ideals. Anglophones and allophones would be nervous about ...”

“... at its most rigid, a duke and an Indian army subaltern were equal in class, however different they may have been in rank or wealth.’ And they go on: ‘there is only one essential prerequisite for being counted among the British aristocracy: the right to be called a gentleman … so that anyone who has inherited the gentlemanly values, or for that ...”

“... by the domination of unions and professional organisations. Not a bad thing in principle, this may have worked, though, to narrow the teacher concerns the Council was prepared to address and to exclude those classroom teachers whose commitment to their work, or vulnerability to its pressures, make such public forums intimidating and unproductive. There are ...”

“... century of national politics are in crisis; an astonishing YouGov poll conducted at the end of May put both Labour and the Conservatives on 19 per cent, behind the Liberal Democrats and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. An Opinium poll subsequently put the Brexit Party out in front on 26 per cent. Farage’s outfit has adopted the model of a platform ...”

“... Black Mischief, another old Chapman & Hall first, no dj, but handsome mottled brown boards.’ We may choose to believe Richard Rayner, as he presents himself to us raw: ‘Perhaps we all have this dream, to tell everything and yet not forfeit love – the only sinner not to be roasted.’ What he’s admitting to, though, is not a series of ...”

“... the Teacher Training Agency, John Patten’s attempt to gain control of the training colleges, may serve for an example; and finally direct intervention, as symbolised by David Blunkett’s threat (Independent on Sunday, 23 February) to ‘lay down from the centre exactly how reading should be taught’. Hobbes would ...”

“... are smiling waitresses, not seen-it-all barkeeps; its anonymous New York voices say ‘yes-how-may-I help-you?’ not ‘how you doin’?’; its background noise is the hiss of espresso machines. If you don’t catch a ride to the Hamptons with your father-in-law in his chopper you must endure the discomforts of the Hampton Jitney. The novel’s frequent ...”

“... among the hundreds of functionaries – more famous than the others, admittedly, though his clerk may exaggerate his fame – who work at and for the Agency, the only force of law and order in the city. What’s more, as often as not he solves his cases incorrectly. Sivart does at least talk like a textbook hard-boiled detective – or rather he writes like ...”

“... or a warped reflection of the real, or a reflection of a reflection of the real; and all of it may or may not refer, however obliquely, to the world outside the novel, a world in which its author is an acclaimed creator of warped realities. It recalls all the conventions of the genre only to subvert them.The first and ...”

“... male and female alike (and particularly the younger ones). Some of them, such as Dyan Sheldon and David Holden, have interesting things to say: others merely plod on across well-trodden ground. Stephen Wall’s ‘The Bridge’ is a wispy and indulgent fragment about a marital break-up and a one-night stand: old themes, old ideas, old forms, old ...”

“... the stage goes up in flames. Loudspeakers fall, records are scattered in the mud. This last item may seem pretty minor in a context of such horror and confusion, but it is shot and situated – we see the disc jockeys eager to save their records rather than themselves – in a way that makes the records stand for much else that is scattered here and could be ...”

“... one needs to know that these are songs of a rather peculiar kind, and that other sorts of letters may have been dropped into the pillar-box with them. Rupert was secretly engaged to Noel from August 1910 to December 1911, and often begged her to marry him; but had it come to the push, he would neither have expected nor wanted the marriage to take place. He ...”