“... obituaries are a rarity. A full flush – the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, New York Times – is a light-deflecting singularity. But there are special cases. As if to make recompense for the substantial reviews they never delivered, the major culprits gave generous space to Prynne, who died, aged 89, on 22 April. Single Tangle Mine, his final chapbook from ...”

“... the national income from labour: according to one recent study by the sociologists Ken-Hou Lin and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, financialisation in the US may have been responsible for more than half the fall in labour’s share of national income between 1970 and 2008. Exorbitant pay levels at the top further widen the gaps: today, nearly 14 per cent of the top 1 ...”

“... out as an independent nation’. Ransom had recruited scholars and writers like Roger Shattuck, Donald Carne-Ross, William Arrowsmith and others who would have been more likely to land in the Ivy League or the great state universities. So Middleton wasn’t wanting for company. The poet David Wevill was a long-time friend and neighbour. The brilliant ...”

“... have come more frequently. Michael Schmidt, his colleague on PN Review, has promoted his work; and Donald Davie, in one of those hot flushes that make his criticism so unpredictable and exciting, has declared Sisson’s ‘The Usk’ to be ‘one of the great poems of our time’. Sisson’s critical writing is intelligent, sharp, individual and readable. He ...”

“... One of the few​ facts of American history of which Donald Trump appears to be aware is that George Washington owned slaves. Trump mentioned this in 2017 as one reason for his opposition to the removal of the monuments to Confederate generals that dot the southern landscape. In Trump’s view owning slaves probably enhances Washington’s reputation: like him, the first president knew how to make a buck ...”

“... couldn’t care less about showing herself in what would vulgarly be thought of as a favourable light. Her life before Connolly was a rackety business: a matter largely of frocks and lovers and food. It was the sort of life you could lead only if you had looks: and ‘Mrs Connolly,’ Maurice Bowra wrote to Ann Fleming, ‘is plainly a cup of tea at a high ...”

“... how it came into being. He takes as his motto ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.’ That is the title of a spirited 1973 polemic against creationism by one of the great evolutionary geneticists, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-75). The maxim suggests two ways of thinking about brains. One is implied directly: start at the ...”

“... in houses where there were grand pianos or interesting pebbles thoughtfully arranged to catch the light, it was an introduction not only to the work of particular painters and sculptors but an experience in itself, an idea about what art and life could be. It was a generously portable idea. A drab student room, you realised, could be improved with a few of ...”

“... less strange- Tho the face, still within it, Between glasses-place, over which time passes-a false light. In his introduction to the New Collected Works, Michael Davidson calls Discrete Series a ‘rather modest book’, but this is true only of its size. Andrew Crozier is surely right to say, in Modern American Poetry (1984), that it is ‘almost too ...”

“... Bryan Carsberg of Oftel smiles up in soft brown light as he dangles in the mirror on a green office wall. Michael Meyer of Emess Lighting is dissected by the blinds that cut across him and then reassembled from outside – his shirtsleeved figure looming like a target in the formulaic eye of some Hollywood assassin ...”

“... by the CIA and other agencies, a process known as ‘stovepiping’. This means that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz judge the veracity of reports from the field themselves (or with their staffers) without the information having first been ‘subjected to rigorous scrutiny’, and then rush the most damning reports into speeches, such as those ...”

“... put Xi and the WHO in their place. He sat in front of a blank blue screen in rimless glasses and a light grey suit, his hair slicked down 1950s-style, bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to the late Donald Pleasence.It took Azar, Donald Trump’s health secretary and a one-time ...”

“... I think there’s more to that argument than Jones allows. The attempts of a leader like Donald Trump to ban Muslims from entering the US, or to build a wall on the border with Mexico, are more about racism and identity than they are about economics or security. And by focusing on the geographical border, Jones neglects the way in which immigration ...”

“... is one of those poets who make the writing of poetry into the subject of the poems they write,’ Donald Davie noted with some scepticism. ‘The commonsense view is that this drastically limits the importance and interest of what they write; and I think this is true.’ But Graham could conceive nothing more important or interesting:To be always alone is ...”

“... other proxies, such as Israel and Iraq, though with little success. Giving Israel the green light to destroy the PLO led to the Lebanon debacle in 1982. Cynically supporting Saddam Hussein in his war of aggression against the mullahs in Tehran led to pointless slaughter. Each of these episodes opened a door through which US forces entered the region. In ...”