“... This volume marks an extension of Mr Irving’s historiography: indeed, its critical reception has already provoked him to reply (in the New Statesman, 8 May) that he sees himself as ‘dedicated to the Augean task of revising modern history’. There are, of course, similarities with his earlier work: the vast mass of detail, painstakingly gathered from an impressive range of oral and written sources (although the rewards are rarely commensurate with the amount of energy used up); the same idiosyncratic use of evidence, as he proceeds from quite minor discoveries to challenging generalisations; and the same bewildering mixture of detailed narrative garnished with reported speech and snippets of broad analysis ...”

“... spared no effort at consolation with other ‘rare boys’. Not all were a success: ‘9 March, David Young! 11 March, D.Y. no good.’ He was dogged by bad luck. He had only to get off with a trooper and either he or the trooper at once fell ill. But trooper Paxton (nephew of the Chatsworth gardener) was a ‘bold, audacious Blackguard such as I ...”

“... The enlightened editor of this publication has sent me these three books for review, having detected some symmetry which might make a joint review appropriate. All three are concerned with an aspect of freedom of speech; all three, moreover, attend to the age-old enigma of whether betrayal of a pledge can ever be justified, and if so, in what circumstances ...”

“... cosy duopoly no less riddled than Fleet Street with high-cost restrictive practices, as David Owen has recently pointed out) breaks down under the impact of the satellite systems that will deliver far more channels to the home. The essential value of the press remains unaltered whether it is produced by steam, hot metal, electronics, or by the ...”

“... shows quite clearly that the intended target is myself) is mostly directed against the work of Dr David McKnight, who has repeatedly demonstrated that Lévi-Strauss’s generalisations about an Australian aboriginal group known as the Wik-mungkan simply do not fit the evidence. It is impossible to judge the utility or disutility of Lévi-Strauss’s argument ...”

“... businessmen visited the country to drum up trade, they found that the Labour Foreign Secretary Dr David Owen’s distaste for Argentina’s record on human rights was an obstacle to their embassy: there was pressure on Owen to change his critical attitude. A consortium of British banks led by Lloyds organised a 75 million dollar loan soon after the Videla ...”

“... for a long time to come. Some of those who were content with the Falklands war – such as David Owen – have baulked at the American attack: it is often more convenient to criticise the aggression of foreigners than that of your own nation, and Libya has been an American show, a Reagan spectacular, with the British input amounting to no more than an ...”

“... cuisines, and often deeply serious, as in his frank and affectionate profiles of Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden, Alan Davidson and Christopher Driver. Above all, he has an endearingly amateur – in both senses – quality. Symptomatic of this is a detail volunteered by Ann Barr in her introduction. She tells us, with a pregnant use of the ...”

“... face and then drawing from it: the Librarian, for example. Our new sculptors – Edward Allington, David Mach, Tony Cragg – give us the set-up pure and simple. There are 21 articles in this book, one of which samples a further 16 texts. Those by Sven Alfons, R.J.W. Evans, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, and Piero Falchetta are the most useful, as they enable the ...”

“... stories as words are at conveying pictures. An observer who had not already heard the story of David and Goliath would see in the Speculum picture nothing more specific than a king who has just cut off the head of a giant (the latter identified not so much by his size as by his club). Indeed, even if one does already know a story, it is by no means always ...”

“... critic, even of works he found distasteful. When he was in France he joined in the execration of David expressed by most British artists. They found it unthinkable that a regicide could be a good painter, and preferred minor figures such as Guérin and Gérard to the great master of French Neo-classicism. Yet Farington could still pinpoint the salient ...”

“... and is now shrinking to its original membership (who are breathing sighs of relief). It came in on David Bowie and glam-rock, unisex, disco and women’s lib, short hair and Andy Warhol. Kids arriving in New York from the outback needed a quick code to bridge the gap from hick to sophisticate. Greyhound got them to the bus station and Gay took them on from ...”

“... John Donne, and was seized upon by a readership anxious to stress the degeneracy of their own age. David Jones, an autochthonous Welsh, rather than Anglo-American, modernist of Poundian tendencies, offers another poet’s version of Johnson’s aperçu in his preface to the Anathemata (1952), and claims the Metaphysicals for Wales at the same time. Jones is ...”

“... papers in Philosophical Subjects. For some time, John Searle has been in the business of refuting David Hume’s thesis that purely normative or evaluative claims cannot be derived from purely factual claims. This has generated a certain amount of argument in the journals. Jaakko Hintikka is one of Searle’s critics. In ‘Prima-Facie Obligations’, Searle ...”

“... This is a collection of essays by one of our best literary critics, in fact exactly the kind of thing one would expect from him; it simply continues the good work in the manner of his last two books. Why, then, do the reviewers shy like frightened cab-horses? Because Professor Lodge not only includes about seventy-five pages of ‘structuralism’, but actually uses the word in his title, and suggests that it is possible for an English professor to get along with it ...”