“... alumni of the Slade: Paul and John Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson, Edward Wadsworth, William Roberts and David Bomberg. They were all influenced, directly or indirectly, by Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibition of 1910, which introduced the British to Continental art, especially Cézanne, but they were able to develop their own work with an originality that weaker ...”

“... he com furth of Ingland’. It is not known for sure what he had been doing there. He may well have been in the entourage of the Scottish embassy which was conducting the negotiations with Henry VII that led to the marriage two years later of Princess Margaret Tudor to James IV. ‘London thow art of Towynys A per se’, an anonymous poem, is said ...”

“... worse; if we go on as we are, the scientists warned, our planet’s near-to-medium-term outlook may well be grim. Cape Grim, aptly named in 1798 by its British discoverer, Matthew Flinders RN, is a 3o0-foot sandstone spike projecting into the Southern Ocean on the wind-whipped western coast of Tasmania. Here nine weather scientists reporting to the IPCC ...”

“... which records the birthdays of various contemporary literary figures. Here is Dennis Potter on 17 May, Michael Frayn on 8 September, Edna O’Brien on 15 December, and so naturally I turn to my own birthday. May 9 is blank except for the note: ‘The first British self-service launderette is opened on Queensway, London ...”

“... the rest of the century. Two other recent publications, confronting the same facts, reflect and may reinforce the change of mood described above. Marmor, Mashaw and Harvey’s excellent book begins with the statement: ‘This book has a simple message: America’s social welfare efforts are taking a bum rap.’ They continue: ‘The vision of social welfare ...”

“... were either soured by authorial complaints against Olwyn Hughes, Ted Hughes and the Estate (e.g. David Holbrook, Edward Butscher) or have come to nothing (e.g. Lois Ames, Harriet Rosenstein). Most of the book-length literary criticism is unimpressive. There isn’t much to choose, for example, between Margaret Dickie Uroff (‘As they developed, Plath came ...”

“... were hoping for conversions, and it is suggested that the millenarian current strong in England may have had an influence on Jewish thinking. Old Testament thinking certainly had an influence on the nascent English imperialism of Cromwell and his fellow Puritans. Another Chosen People was taking the stage, and Ireland was undergoing the fate of Canaan long ...”

“... In many ways Thompson’s books always carried his readers a little further into pulp-amorality-may-hem than they may have been prepared to go. Certainly his books never failed to deliver those goods touted on the garish tricolour covers: women trussed up on the floor after a beating, or buxomly offering bottled liquor to ...”

“... how from these laconic texts, figures like Rebekah, Jacob, Joseph, Judah, Tamar, Moses, Saul, David and Ruth emerge, characters who, beyond any archetypal role they may play as bearers of a divine mandate, have been etched as indelibly vivid individuals in the imagination of a hundred generations’. This aim, he warns ...”

“... and Cockie Blixen, Bror’s second wife, on safari’. Who are Tommy and Cockie? The moviegoer may remember that the Baroness’s husband was called ‘Bror’. He is mentioned only twice in the book, unnamed: ‘When the war broke out, my husband and the two Swedish assistants on the farm volunteered and went down to the German border ... My husband wrote ...”

“... novelist’s ear, possibly what was known when I was a boy as a pack of lies. Not only the cynical may find it remarkable how these writers, so dull at home, become so fascinating abroad, so easily embroiled in sexual intrigues, backwoods vendettas, dangerous adventures, so readily adopted by crazed millionaires, whimsical bandits, insatiable madams of ...”

“... than the widespread apprehension of Bewick as an untutored rustic would lead us to believe. Bewick may have been bluff and candid but he was never artless. His Memoir, written when he heard that ‘more than one literary character’ was planning his biography, is a remarkably skilful and disingenuous apologia, intended to establish his stature both as an ...”

“... that the Henry Moore Foundation might help a publisher, so a number of old conversations may yet see print. I was an inquisitive, I hope scholarly ghost. The project was to write a history of the sculpture department at St Martin’s School of Art. Anthony Caro invited me to do it, and the idea was that the book would be a tribute to Frank ...”

“... most stimulating paper is one by Bernhard Decker which speculates on how anxiety about idolatry may have determined changes in form and style in the German altarpiece before it led to iconoclasm. He points out that reliquary sculpture – originally gold-plated wooden figures or busts containing relics – were less likely to ‘prompt acts of physical ...”

“... Centennial Park, he was hired at the minimum wage. The bomb fragments found at his home, however, may only have been payment in kind, souvenirs of the explosion rather than evidence pointing to its perpetrator. In this privately-sponsored Olympic Games that wore the face of American nationalism, did the global Olympic village have an enemy guarding its gates ...”