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“... truth that ‘all men are created equal,’ written into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson. He and his co-signatories managed, notoriously, to square this truth with slave-ownership. The self-evidence born of vagueness tends to dissolve when the pitting of interests demands political resolution. Jefferson seems to have agonised, up to ...”

“... has been said about either Pushkin or his wife in this country, but in a recent broadcast Gwyn Williams described Natalya as a ‘good-natured bimbo’, not a very fierce comment but not a tribute one would choose to have on one’s tombstone. Well-informed about the problems of Natalya’s upbringing, Feinstein is balanced in her presentation of her ...”

“... Democrat. In the Labour Party, he may be thought a hostile witness. So, undoubtedly, will Hugh Thomas, who contributes a rather slapdash opening chapter, and Paul Johnson, who writes far more cogently on ‘The British Left, Trade Unions and Democracy’. But their findings, like those of Butler and Marquand, have been overtaken and confirmed by subsequent ...”

“... yet. On the contrary, the poetic scene is full of people who believe that by writing like Edward Thomas, on the one hand, or William Carlos Williams, on the other, they can recover or reconstitute innocence in their medium. And even a senior poet like Norman MacCaig, who is too old a hand to chase such a will of the ...”

“... inventions nod to Joyce (the ‘sun-usedness’ of a road’s macadam) and some to Dylan Thomas (‘the mangle of winter-fall before just the owl-black, pine marten world began’). Some have a distinctive character of their own, as when Warner records that ‘a few cassandras of laugh tremelled along the wall.’ Despite the sparkle of such coinage ...”

“... began to raise new questions about the cultural roots of the modern machine age. When Raymond Williams published Culture and Society in 1958, he began by pointing out that the later 18th century witnessed decisive shifts in the sense of terms such as ‘industry’, once signifying conscientious diligence, now referring rather to the institutions of ...”

“... that refer to these claims. Among the novels about which she has most to say is Death in Venice. Thomas Mann was 35 when he met the original of the boy Tadzio, whose beauty prevents Aschenbach from achieving ‘Platonic sublimation’. Consequently, Mann, with his aesthetic imperative, cannot offer ‘a primarily moral account of what it means to live into ...”

“... to be made, given that relations remained so close for so long? Presumably, we have Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, ‘revolutionary politician and president of the United States’) but not Dwight Eisenhower because the former was born in what was still a British colony, though the latter spent more time in this country and arguably had a greater ...”

“... behind whose mass they can emerge periodically to throw out a sharp non-interpretative idea: Berna Williams on Descartes, Crispin Wright on Wittgenstein; before either of them, P.F. Strawson on Kant. Dummett is not the first to see Frege’s suitability for this role: twenty years ago, in Three Philosophers, Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach treated Frege ...”

“... for Grand Tourists or other wealthy travellers to more exotic lands. In 1799, for example, when Thomas Girtin was nearing the height of his fame as a landscape ‘genius’, Lord Elgin offered him £30 a year to carry out a pictorial survey of Greek monuments in what was then Turkish territory; ‘and as lady Elgin possessed a taste for drawing’, a ...”

“... of her book and who played so prominent a role in Nazi Germany was English: Winifred Marjorie Williams, born in Hastings in 1897. Orphaned at an early age, she came to stay in Oranienburg, near Berlin, with distant relatives, the aged Wagnerians Henriette and Karl Klindworth, in 1907. Karl had studied with Liszt, founded a conservatoire and written piano ...”

“... questions of quality and value. This, once more, is a thoroughly traditional moral project, which Thomas Aquinas would have had no trouble in recognising. Moralism and idealism must be refuted, and the question of what we ought to do must somehow be anchored in the way it is with us. But the spectre of reductionism is not simple to exorcise, and it is easier ...”

“... fantasy. Generally speaking, the English upper middle classes are more reserved than, say, Robin Williams, but this is more a matter of their prep schools than their genes. To reject this claim in anti-stereotyping spirit is an excuse not to do something about the prep schools. English sangfroid has much to do with how you should treat colonials, and ...”

“... was entirely faithful: he had a notorious roving eye and she a serious relationship with Colonel Thomas Tweed, a political associate of Lloyd George’s, in the late 1920s. Her relationship with Lloyd George was, however, passionate and lasting, bringing happiness to both of them. It also burdened Stevenson with as many as three abortions before she finally ...”

“... better the impulse to post pictures of your balls than the impulse to evangelise or bomb. When Thomas Pynchon asked the same question in Gravity’s Rainbow (‘What’s it all been for, the murdering seas, the gangrene winters and starving springs, our bone pursuit of the unfaithful, midnights of wrestling with the Beast?’), his answer was much more ...”