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“... which can be seen as a sort of compressed version of Guernica – whose dual models in Poussin and David are not painterly in style. Having gone further here than ever before into the post-Renaissance tradition, Picasso soon turned his back on it to work, more characteristically, in a pre-Giottesque tradition. If his painting of the period preceding his late ...”

“... to their new faith was doubtful and they needed to be watched – rightly, it seems, for the young Maimonides wrote a tract urging Jews to choose Islam rather than death, and argued that merit could still be earned by continuing surreptitiously to practise as much of Judaism as was possible. The example of these forced converts moulded the behaviour of ...”

“... Hero’ is the source of Joyce’s title for the forerunner to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ‘Stephen Hero’. Turpin is no hero to James Sharpe, who sets out to cut him down to size, just another ‘callous, brutal and violent’ criminal, an ‘unpleasant thug’, hardly distinguishable from so many others, so that when The Lives of Noted ...”

“... in which he died on a makeshift altar; the brazenly Christ-like representation of his dead body by David; the renaming of Montmartre (Martyr’s Mount) as Montmarat; the chant of ‘cor de Jésus, cor de Marat’ as members of the Cordelier club carried his heart through the streets of Paris. What did this imitation really amount to? Did it simply express a ...”

“... On page 38 of this book appears one of the most remarkable photographs I have seen. It shows a young mother playing an energetic game (tag, perhaps, or pig-in-the-middle) with her three children, two girls and a boy. There are four lively, happy people in the photograph, but only six arms and six legs, for the two girls share a body ...”

“... David Means​ wrote a novel. David Means wrote a novel! Reading the hype around Hystopia – the new novel, the first novel, so far the only novel by the American writer David Means – you have to wonder how much pressure Means resisted from his publishers to forswear the pleasures of the customary gnomic cipher (American Enchiridion, The Accidental Occidental) and just call the book that: David Means Wrote a Novel: A Novel Written by David Means ...”

“... a pot-boy (Bob Gliddery in Our Mutual Friend), seven surgeons, three dance-masters, a reporter (David Copperfield), a tobacconist (Mrs Chivery in Little Dorrit), two fishermen, 32 teachers, four blacksmiths, six undertakers, 45 lawyers and sixteen landladies, several magistrates, a weaver (Stephen Blackpool in Hard Times), an umbrella-maker (Alexander Trott ...”

“... but for those who care, the shows are like visitations. Last week there was a perfectly tonsured young man in full Berber costume outside the old sorting office in New Oxford Street. He lives in Cockfosters and maintains a blog on male trends. ‘If fashion isn’t everybody’s life then I don’t know who everybody is,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s not the ...”

“... and remnants of the Liberal ascendancy shoulder-to-shoulder with a street-wise generation of young Liberals who cared little for conventional politics. Grimond would catch the Speaker’s eye as the Chamber emptied and speak intelligently to a House which liked the man, but thought his party a joke. Then came Jeremy Thorpe, the flamboyant ...”

“... A drunken American historian once lurched over to David Caute at a party and told him: ‘Having read your last novel, or part of it, I’d advise you to give up writing fiction – if you weren’t such a lousy historian.’ Caute, a connoisseur of masochism, tells the story against himself (in Contemporary Novelists, 1976 ...”

“... Theory, after all, has made it possible for a lot of old buffers to reappear in the world as young buffers; they are not likely to jeopardise their rejuvenations by behaving loosely. Empson thought one of the most attractive features of Buddhism was its ‘coolness ... towards Heaven’. ‘Also we are told there was a minor god who became interested in ...”

“... lawful manuscript. But hurt letters are not the stuff of which suppression is made – even the young Tory Rupert Allason’s rather disingenuous recent book on MI5, under the pseudonym ‘Nigel West’, was treated to the compliment of injunction proceedings and a little filleting. It may be that MI6 no longer care very much about the trickle of ...”

“... things are there.’ Similar scenes, evocative rather than detailed, abound in Buchan and Brett Young, in Waugh and Wodehouse: their country-house world was ‘mellow, dignified, creeper-clad and bathed in perpetual sunshine’. Significantly, this attitude prevailed at a time when, for the first long period in four centuries, few new country houses were ...”

“... obsequiously in thrall to Trump. The Democrats have tremendous possible assets in their energetic young left wing – the leadership is good at procedure but not much else. Those younger members need to be instructed that other people are listening to social media. If you want to talk about Jewish money – a hard call anyway – don’t do it in the language ...”

“... is why it has long employed teams of psychologists to help market its products to children as young as two. Give it a child at an impressionable age, and it will have a customer for life. Ben Rogers is aware of food’s emotional power, and of its ability to create bonds between people. In Beef and Liberty, he has written a whimsical, amusing, informative ...”