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“... By a considerable coincidence there are now published within a short interval the first biographies of two substantial Victorian literary figures, over a hundred years after the death of either man. The coincidence is made more striking by the similarities between George Henry Lewes and John Forster. They were two of the stars of Victorian literary journalism: much in demand as editors, and absolutely reliable in their capacity to produce essays and reviews of first-rate quality on a huge range of topics at an intimidating speed ...”

“... and the exigencies of daily life, or it has no meaning. As for geography, that ‘gives out at the first horizon’. The Shakespeare Wallah takes its title from the film made by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant from a script by the novelist Ruth Jhabvala, about a troupe of Shakespearean actors travelling over the Indian ...”

“... house on the jolly corner, as he usually and, quite fondly, described it, the one in which he had first seen the light.’ He also owns another house not quite so splendid but very lucrative. Another self, an alter ego, the billionaire that he might have become had he stayed in ‘monstrous’ New York, begins to emerge as he negotiates the contracts on his ...”

“... that the average nine-to-five professional porn star can usually manage (or so I gather). In the first programme, on forests, the drapery was hung in long narrow strips from ceiling to floor, like net curtains. It was projected all over with leaves, and organised into two files to represent, with appropriate ambiguity, a grove of tall trees or the nave of a ...”

“... also found the film troubling because of its very glossiness, and troubling in ways I didn’t at first understand. It’s not that it isn’t accurate, or that it oversimplifies history. In certain respects the film is fanatically accurate, full of the exact looks of old icons, minutely close to many of the marvellous photographs collected in the ...”

“... demand which he makes of a theory of individuation is that it ‘comprise at least three things: first, an elucidation of the primitive concept of identity as sameness; second, some however abstract account of what it is for something to be a substance that persists through change; and third, (supervening in [his] treatment upon the ...”

“... Seventies, who have only ever been aware of a Tory government, and who are about to vote for the first time; those disengaged from the world of party politics since 1989, when they fell off the electoral register rather than pay the cruel levy of the Poll Tax. That drug-taking, hedonistic, supposedly apathetic generation is being fiercely wooed by a new ...”

“... By the same token, judicial retirements are of great political moment. Obama tried to nudge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire in 2013, when the Democrats still held the Senate; his efforts were rebuffed. Then, in February 2016, Scalia died when the Senate was controlled by Republicans, who refused to hold hearings on Obama’s nominee. The consequences have ...”

“... complex and vulnerable, yet in natural harmony with the fabulous elements in the tale. In the first volume of the series, Master and Commander, he meets up with a young Naval officer, Jack Aubrey, when the two discover a mutual passion for Boccherini, and a pleasure in playing him together on violin and viola. The partnership continues throughout the ...”

“... and the Sunday papers run their Books of the Year columns, to find that no one yet has singled out Ruth Dudley Edwards’s marvellous biography of Victor Gollancz. The book is full of wonders, but the chief impression it left on me was the dynamism and energy of the man during times which seemed altogether gloomy for someone of his radical and optimistic ...”

“... In 1926, his demons returned. He became obsessed about his appearance, and one day rushed into Ruth Mack Brunswick’s consulting-room, shouting and holding a mirror to his nose. She diagnosed paranoia. The Wolf-Man knew immediately what that meant: Uncle Peter. He had abandoned his mansion, set up a tent in a secluded field on his estate and had lived ...”

“... to St Francis of Assisi that Margaret Thatcher quoted on the steps of 10 Downing Street on her first day as prime minister, 4 May 1979: ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.’ Thatcher had just called on the queen and no doubt wrote the words as an aide-memoire on the short drive back through St James Park from Buckingham Palace. It is as if on ...”

“... wants to rescue Mead. His book portrays her as one of the more sympathetic US internationalists. First, she got Americans interested in the far corners of the globe in the early 1940s when, in Mandler’s view, many were inclined to turn their backs. Second, she championed a postwar international order that would make the world ‘safe for ...”

“... causing her to miscarry. But she had been unsure about the pregnancy, even though it was not her first. ‘When I began to know that I was pregnant, I had my midwife Dianora, who has [helped] deliver my other children, come and I told her I wondered whether I was pregnant and she looked at me and said I was and from that point I began to grow.’ Pregnancy ...”

“... keep silent? Might they be able to prophesy if they wore a veil? These agonised questions from the first years of Christian history have plenty of modern echoes. The presence of strong-minded and wealthy widows in the early Church caused much anxiety, especially over whether or not they should remarry. Instructions from third-century Syria insisted that widows ...”