“... by his translation of the Austrian folk tale Bambi, which carried a moist Foreword from John Galsworthy.) This was the literary bridge that carried Chambers from relative hackdom on the Daily Worker to pre-eminence at the Stalinist flagship of letters, The New Masses. Indeed it was his usefulness and ability in this department that got him ...”

“... and tells me ideally she would vote for a bizarre dream-ticket of Bradley and Republican senator John McCain, who both advocate it. But most are straightforwardly undecided between Bradley and the other Democratic contender and favourite, Al Gore. Bradley arrives, six and a half feet tall and ramrod straight. He walks round the room, shaking hands and saying ...”

“... of Philip Glass’s Monsters of Grace, ‘a digital opera in three dimensions’ which has toured North America and Europe since it opened last year, says of this work: ‘I’m not giving you puzzles to solve, only pictures to hear.’ Some of the tales that Rée includes within his metaphysics remind us that Western sensibilities, however gross they may ...”

“... Cheyne and his diet. He was favourably quoted in Tom Jones; Samuel Johnson commended his books; John Wesley’s Primitive Physick copied out whole sections of Cheyne’s work; and his patients included Pope, Gay, Beau Nash, Richardson, the Methodist Countess of Huntingdon, Robert Walpole’s adolescent daughter, Catherine (who died under Cheyne’s care of ...”

“... considerable burden of guilt, both for his work as an informer and for the murder. Degaev left for North America around 1886; by the end of the decade he had settled in St Louis and was working for a chemical firm. In 1891 he was naturalised under the name Alexander Pell – perhaps after the Russian chemist Aleksandr Pel, or the English mathematician ...”

“... certainly of a lot more interest (and influence) after the Beatles had taken it up, even in the North-West. And while Lennon had his self-indulgent and self-pitying side, and may well have said, ‘I like to write about me’ (as opposed to the outgoing McCartney), we are after all talking about the man who wrote ‘Revolution’, ‘Give Peace a ...”

“... All Hear It for Mildred Bailey!’) is Horace. ‘Buried at Springs’ anticipates Bishop’s ‘North Haven’, and there is no shortage of other ‘Bishop moments’, such as ‘More litter, less clutter’ from ‘The Man with the Golden Glow’ or ‘The bay agitatedly tries to smooth itself out./If it were tissue paper it would need damp and an ...”

“... the authority of the king directly. In 1536, of course, the case was different. Much of the North of England exploded in the largest and most threatening of all the rebellions against the Tudors, the Pilgrimage of Grace. Such major events deserve exhaustive treatment, and Bernard gives the Pilgrimage more than a hundred pages. Against a mass of ...”

“... American writing that have flourished and endured. Wolff sidestepped Postmodern elders such as John Barth, Robert Coover, Guy Davenport, William Gass, Harry Mathews, Paul Metcalf, Gilbert Sorrentino, Ronald Sukenick and Paul West, as well as their heirs, such as T. Coraghessan Boyle, Lydia Davis, Rick Moody, William Vollmann and David Foster Wallace. None ...”

“... of 1949 was designed to challenge the ‘false doctrines’ of communism in the Third World. John F. Kennedy set up the US Agency for International Aid in 1961 and in 1971 USAID was joined by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (which was absorbed into the Development Finance Corporation in 2019). In the eye of this hurricane of acronyms, two ...”

“... being central to any of the novels’ plots as they unfold.Val McDermid has called Herron ‘the John le Carré of our generation’ (a phrase plastered on all the paperback covers) and Herron acknowledged the debt, long before she said that, in the first Slough House book, Slow Horses (2010): one of the characters was given ‘le Carré’s collected ...”

“... from the South as part of the Bargain of 1877 that ended Reconstruction were deployed in the North to suppress a national railroad strike. Meanwhile, the army was battling Indians in the West, bent on opening their lands to exploitation by railroads, mining companies and farmers. Native Americans did not think the federal government was in ...”

“... emerging local elites. In the mid-20th century, Nigerians began publishing adverts for pen pals in North American newspapers, promising ivory or ebony knives in exchange for cash advances – the requests were signed off with made-up royal titles. ‘Generous, but possibly gullible, American citizens have allowed themselves to be taken in by African ...”

“... girly-boy who hymned his cheap-suit backstreet bohemia over blackout power chords – as Smith’s John the Baptist. Horses betrays a love of early Kinks, Them, Who, but reframes their riffy aesthetic with studied artfulness. How much credit should go to the producer, John Cale, isn’t clear. Smith never sounded this ...”

“... came across: much of Hunky Dory consists of pastiches of Bowie’s musical heroes of the 1960s – John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Anthony Newley, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground. Which would make Ziggy Stardust the beautiful butterfly that emerged from the chrysalis. Paul Trynka begins his biography with a description of Bowie’s performance of ‘Starman’ on ...”