“... Written in a deadpan, matter-of-fact style, it’s a kind of literary analogue to the indie rock of the mid-Eighties, to the music of bands like the Replacements who sang tepidly defiant sagas of generational self-pity: ‘We’re getting no place/As fast as we can.’ Moody situates a gallery of burned-out kids in the toxic environment of northern New ...”

“... David Freedberg’s new book is illustrated with wonderful, detailed drawings and engravings of plants, fungi, fossils, birds, insects and animals – nearly all made in the 17th century. Freedberg is an art historian; the starting point of his book is a dream he had sometime before 1986 in which Anthony Blunt appeared holding a drawing of an orange ...”

“... in point would be The Elephant Man (1980), a still from which appears on the cover of the book. David Lynch’s film may indeed demonstrate ‘time-worn points of view’ in some ways, and its central figure may indeed combine the stereotypes of the Sweet Innocent and the Saintly Sage (Norden is inordinately fond of categories like these and the ‘Elderly ...”

“... to 1953 and is set in rural Mississippi, a landscape of baked clay and shacks with cinder yards. David, the hero-narrator, grows up an only child in redneck poverty. His shiftless father drifts from job to job, beats his wife and lets David get beaten up by young thugs his own age. The family are ostracised by respectable ...”

“... is perishable. Caesar’s precipitous rise and fall is a case in point. In When Caesar Was King, David Margolick’s admirable mission is to remind the reader of Caesar’s clout and to bring him back into the cultural discussion. To that end, he has thrown a wide net over the shows and the people who made them, although he doesn’t know quite what to make ...”

“... is reminded of Houdini as he watches a girl doing weird gyrations in the midst of the crowd at a rock festival. Studying the film of her movements that he has shot, he sees ‘someone in a straitjacket’, ‘the classic terror ... of someone straitjacketed and trying to break free’. ‘Lives of the Poets’, the novella which takes up nearly half of ...”

“... worth reading for a justification of his party that rises above ritual partisan point-scoring. If David Willetts was not already the best-known of the three when the books were commissioned, he certainly is now. Allegedly known as ‘Two Brains’ to his friends (or alleged friends, perhaps), Mr Willetts last year found himself in difficulties before a ...”

“... Tina. ‘Wonderful! … Where’s the library?’) At the end of 1997 Brown was replaced by David Remnick, who as an editor is less Buzz-happy than Brown, but as a writer ranges, browlessly, from Kremlin politics to Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile Seabrook lived to tell the tale, though half his chapters are revamped articles written for Brown, whom he regards ...”

“... number of survivors miraculously trickled back to England. Among them were the ship’s captain, David Cheap; his second-in-command, Robert Baynes; the chief gunner, John Bulkeley; the carpenter, John Cummins; and three young midshipmen, John Byron, Alexander Campbell and Isaac Morris. They returned home in rival groups, by different routes, telling ...”

“... member, I have now read, in addition to the biography, the full-length critical studies by David Mikics and James Naremore, watched Jan Harlan’s excellent documentary, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, and explored every entry in The Stanley Kubrick Archives edited by Alison Castle: a 13-pound art-historical tome containing solid articles on every ...”

“... they sit behind a sign saying ‘Welcome!’ and greet you with the devil hand gesture you see at rock festivals. UCL students have been occupying a hall in the main building since 24 November, and are now a focal point for the national student protests. This is day eight. The occupation began at a ‘What Next?’ meeting on the day of the second student ...”

“... the greatest) but it was a fatal goring during a bullfight in 1947 that made him a legend. Like rock stars, bullfighters rarely age well; they become parodies of their former selves or struggle to adjust to everyday life. Dominguín was a tragic figure in later years – an alcoholic recluse in Sotogrande, a millionaire’s enclave in southern Spain, his ...”

“... it, because not understanding it in scientific terms is not to understand it at all, but David Bodanis, the author of E=mc2, is not one of them. As someone to whom science has always been a black hole, I see Bodanis and those who bother to try to explain to the likes of me what they understand mathematically as therapists of a sort. Not to understand ...”

“... Mourner’s Kaddish on my phone. A local farmer had directed my guide towards a couple of stubs of rock, the only remnants of dozens of gravestones that had long ago been removed for use as building materials. Brown hens pecked at the grass. It was impossible to tell where my ancestors were buried or the location of the mass grave containing five hundred of ...”

“... traveller work by place or by author? That is to say, will he happen to find himself in Blowing Rock, set up his lectern in the market square, then discover from his literary guide that yes-indeedy in this vurry town John Hersey wrote his Hiroshima? Or should we envisage a more dogged, gumshoe type – one who picks an author and then tracks him all the way ...”