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“... Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, J.G. Ballard and Hunter S. Thompson: in other words, men. He says more than once that he’s less interested in typewriters as machines (once upon a time the word also referred to the people, usually women, who used the machines) than in typewriting as discourse. But this is typewriting as it appeals to geeks who like guns: all ...”

“... vanish from the title pages. The earliest, weightiest defence of the book came from Thomas Macaulay: his counterblast to Croker in the Whig Edinburgh Review was written to settle a private score, but he was sincere in his admiration. He found in the diary the same qualities of observation that in 1778 had made Evelina, in his view, the first ...”

“... hated Prussian militarism and loved naked women. What distinguishes his drawings from the more dogmatic anti-militarists is the wheezing black thrill and delirious triumph he takes in depicting the madness around him – the sheer fecundity of his misanthropy. ‘People are swine’ was the closest thing Grosz had to a motto (until he replaced it in ...”

“... inflicted on innocent villagers by drone strikes – the need for proper answers could hardly be more urgent. If Islam is ‘just’ a religion, comparable to but distinct from its Abrahamic siblings, Western societies may feel confident in pressing Muslims to conform to mainstream values while allowing them spaces for public worship and private conscience ...”

“... are not the observations of a writer who trusts his instincts, still less his reason. They are more like the carefully sifted, windswept relics of a dried-up saint. In these diaries Coetzee creates the sense of remove of a classical work. The romantics force their genius on you like a coat, and get you to wear it; the classical writer takes you by the hand ...”

“... No.1 Bestseller’: ‘Second only to P.D. James in the run up to Christmas’ deserving more respect, of a certain kind anyway, than ‘No. 1 at a quiet time of year’. I say P.D. James rather than J.K. Rowling because the precocious Potter has been banned from ‘fiction’ for being both underage and too successful, although I’d have thought ...”

“... lab. The biodefence budget would be better spent, Klotz and Sylvester argue, preparing for more likely and more deadly epidemics: bird flu, for example. They’re upbeat about the prospects for a more rational biodefence programme under Obama. Their determination to be as positive ...”

“... ways, are founded on what we experience when we frequent wild country – sometimes virgin, more often partially domesticated. We leave our prints on it, our tracks, and used by generations these become a track, a trail, a trod, a path, a highway. Ever since my memory began I have followed such tracks with foot and eye: the stony, grassy drove roads ...”

“... a lack of any kind of respect for achievement and status.’ As if his status made it more rather than less acceptable for him to borrow money from Geoffrey Robinson without declaring it, or to put in a word at the Home Office to help Srichand Hinduja get a passport. Readers might be forgiven at times for thinking that a ...”

“... the rules of how a certain kind of movie should be made, and are sure to delight the crowds even more. For the sequels to live up to The Matrix will be difficult, and it’s small wonder that both were filmed together, part three to be released in November: to be that different three times in a row would surely be impossible – just look what happened to ...”

“... teacher who would like to spend her time reading Keats and Donne with her pupils; still, there’s more than one type of ambiguity, and it’s clear enough which type Humphrys has in mind: politicians rather than poets are his targets. He also hates ‘management speak’: ‘Each specialist library will be the product of a community of practice of all those ...”

“... mainshock before its occurrence.’ On 30 March, Giuliani says he was forbidden from making any more public pronouncements. The next day, a special meeting of the Commissione Nazionale per la Previsione e Prevenzione dei Grandi Rischi was convened in L’Aquila (the commission usually met in Rome). ‘It is unlikely that an earthquake like the one in ...”

“... a German shepherd bitch and her five puppies, which lived in one of the bunker’s bathrooms. Ever more dissociated from the outside world, he continued to issue impossible orders to armies that no longer existed, and had officers appointed, sacked and executed as the whim took him. Within hours of Hitler’s suicide, General Hans Krebs set out to pay a visit ...”

“... to 70 years after the death of the author, came into force in Britain on 1 January 1996. They are more lenient in cases where copyright was revived rather than merely extended, and publishing material copied from 1922 – most of the words in the ‘Reader’s Edition’ – wasn’t unlawful, Mr Justice Lloyd ruled, but payment of royalties was required. For ...”

“... Donne’s greatness as axiomatic. I still enjoy much of Donne much of the time, but will grant more readily that Dryden and Johnson had a point: conspicuous cleverness is not always a good thing. It can go too far, and seem merely frivolous. There are moments, subjects and genres where it feels out of place. The usual advice – read a poet’s best ...”