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“... His wife and daughter came to visit him. He didn’t remember them but said they seemed very nice. So our plan was out and I found myself dumped by a man for his wife. The other result was that he became the amnesiac professor in Briefing for a Descent into Hell (a novel by Doris) with whom the Olympian gods toyed; he became Doris’s seafarer endlessly ...”

“... really did do a lot of work on optometry (and on electricity, and he did write his ghastly Poor Richard advice column, as becomes increasingly significant as the novel goes on). And Washington really was a surveyor and land-speculator, though I wouldn’t like to say about the kasha varnishkies or the hemp. Even Gershom, who must be a total invention, is an ...”

“... detailed links with Shakespeare’s plays, but I believe it is necessary to set two passages from Richard II and Henry IV Part I next to this sonnet – which, as Vendler says, is the first to remark on ‘a true flaw’ in the friend. In Act III of Richard II, Bolingbroke and his party confront ...”

“... Cambridge. On parade (on King’s Parade in fact) just after ten, where the calming presence of Richard Lloyd Morgan, the chaplain of King’s, waits to shepherd me to the Senior Common Room. It’s already crowded with dons, some, since it’s the university sermon, presumably heads of houses.* I manage to avoid a chat by settling into a corner to con my ...”

“... autumn I bought, at Deighton Bell in Trinity Street, a copy of George III and the Politicians by Richard Pares, a book I have still, my name written in it by a friend, as I disliked my handwriting then as I do now. It was a detailed, allusive book, demanding a more thorough knowledge of 18th-century politics than a schoolboy could be expected to have, but I ...”

“... light fitting, white pottery shade, a little battered, but with the counterweight intact. It’s a nice find, though, like its ex-owners, we don’t need the fitting, but if we did … It’s cheering for R., who’s in turmoil over developments at the magazine and has pretty much decided to resign.10 May, Yorkshire. From being an unqualified admirer of Philip ...”

“... lying full-length on the daybed breathing smoke at the ceiling and rumbled that laziness was a nice luxury. ‘I’m probably working a great deal harder just now,’ Crane shot back, ‘than either of you!’ It was Red Badge he was working on. Among the clutter in Linson’s studio were piles of back issues of the Century, a magazine Linson kept for the ...”

“... It was Richard Crossman who described secrecy as ‘the British disease’. As with other alleged vices anglais – strikes, spanking and sodomy spring to mind – this seems on the surface to be unfair. Other societies have undoubtedly been as secretive. Soviet Russia, for example: I don’t suppose it was any easier to see your medical records there than it is here ...”

“... brother Ralph, who has high claims to be one of the worst editors in English history. It is nice to have the correct text, and quite a number of letters have not appeared in print before – in particular, a series which concerns his finances, letters to his legal adviser, William Pyne, and to his tailor, ...”

“... end well.By the time​ her first books appeared, Comyns was married to her second husband, Richard Comyns Carr, from whom she adopted her pen name. She met him through Lee and Brinton, and the three remained enmeshed in their torturous triangle. After Caroline’s birth Comyns had become increasingly desperate for Lee to acknowledge the child and leave ...”

“... rough sleepers and drug casualties, and nobody is bringing them any food-aid benefits. ‘Have a nice day, have a nice day, have a nice day’ is the endless mantra from the Big Issue salesman, wasting his unintended scorn on the passing mob.As you move through Spitalfields, the former ...”

“... did not displace Transcendental Anatomy easily. At the British Museum (Natural History), Richard Owen promulgated a brilliant programme of comparative anatomy based on the idea that the similarities among animals derive from their correspondence to an ideal form – an Archetype built to a Divine Plan. For this, as well as his unattractive ...”

“... More often, the author devotes herself to simple-minded reduction. She thinks Cordelia ever such a nice girl, and Cressida perfectly horrid. ‘Cordelia is the quiet absolute,’ she gushes, without wondering whether she’s also a bit stubborn (‘a chip off the old block’, as Peggy Ashcroft once described her); ‘greater than Virgilia, her very silence is ...”

“... deadpan account of the tracking and capture of Eichmann in The House on Garibaldi Street; Richard Deacon, The Israeli Secret Service, which tells the story, among others, of Wolfgang Lotz, the Israeli spy with unassailably Aryan looks who infiltrated Egyptian government circles to get plans for rocket sites and the names of German technicians: a story ...”

“... riding to Westminster in a golden coach. Nanny lights the fire and sits herself down with a nice cup of tea and yesterday’s Daily Express, but she keeps half an eye on us too, as we bring out our trophies from abroad, the books and pictures we have managed to get past the customs. (Nanny has a pair of scissors handy, to cut out anything it wouldn’t ...”