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“... in general, in just these terms. Five years after he died she told a prospective biographer, Samuel French Morse, that ‘Mr Stevens’s poetry was a distraction that he found delight in, and which he kept entirely separate from his home life’ (her emphasis). As a further discouragement, she made clear to Morse her personal dislike of her husband’s ...”

“... is now determined to avenge its humiliation by the Supreme Court in 2019 when it threw out Boris Johnson’s illegal attempt to prorogue Parliament. Suella Braverman, the attorney general, spoke for Johnson and many others in this Tory cabinet when she proclaimed that ‘we must take back control’ from the ...”

“... aloud for corks.The connection between the Cave of Spleen and Pope’s own retreat was made early: Samuel Lewis’s 1785 plan of the grotto, sold to the tourists who had been flocking there ever since Pope’s death in 1744, labels one of its principal chambers ‘the Cave of Pope’. The bulk of the villa was demolished in 1808 and the grotto fell into ...”

“... intent were an expression of antisemitism. The response, which I signed along with Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and others, condemned Hamas’s actions of 7 October and affirmed the ‘vital need to protect Jewish life in Germany in the face of rising antisemitism’. It insisted that we must not ‘close down the space for debate and ...”

“... since Gibbon, the Puritans as wittily as Hume, the egotistical faith of Milton as delectably as Dr Johnson. (How did Macaulay come to decide that Milton was not an egotist?) Trevor-Roper’s indictments offer fundamental challenges to historians who approach those subjects with different preconceptions or who suppose themselves to have no preconceptions at ...”

“... and temperamental … Nothing is more subjective and individual as personal taste.’ Hugh Johnson sticks with the crudity of stars (one star = ‘plain, everyday quality’; four stars = ‘grand, prestigious, expensive’) and tries to persuade himself that ‘the whole unreal business’ may eventually go away. It’s an American ...”

“... Ciceronian’, with each main verb cunningly held back to the end of the sentence. According to Johnson, he was a remarkable instance of ‘how far impudence may carry ignorance’. Taylor himself – my John Taylor – later became oculist to George III, a job he shared with his brother. The post was unpaid and undemanding: though Taylor seems to have been ...”

“... known one thing about Anna Letitia Barbauld, which was her appearance in a droll anecdote told by Samuel Taylor Coleridge towards the end of his life and recorded in the posthumous volume of his Table Talk. ‘Mrs Barbauld told me that the only faults she found with the Ancient Mariner were – that it was improbable, and had no moral,’ Coleridge is ...”

“... to epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, cultural analysis and literary criticism, that, as Samuel Hynes observed, it is very difficult to see how the work could ever have cohered into a single enterprise. Each volume is hectic, overwritten, easily distracted and confusingly organised, fighting on several fronts at once. ‘It would be in your own ...”

“... of the author’ was underlined. When Joyce was told about the book, he remarked that Samuel Beckett had already read it and had praised it very highly. When he then read the book, which was the last novel he read in his life, Joyce said: ‘That’s a real writer, with a true comic spirit. A really funny book.’ He spoke to a French critic about ...”

“... on the nuclear codes?‘J.D. Vance! J.D. Vance!’ the forum chanted.I’ll take that as a yes.Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin senator, complained about ‘biological males competing against girls’. I suspect he will never know how sinister he sounds speaking about ‘girls’, but his transphobic contortions were entertainingly undercut by the public address ...”

“... hide-and-seek with society was carefully staged. In 1877, she refused to see Samuel Bowles, the editor of the Springfield Daily Republican, with whom she often corresponded. ‘Emily, you damn rascal,’ he shouted from the bottom of the stairs. ‘No more of this nonsense. I’ve travelled all the way from Springfield to see you. Come ...”

“... of the truth after an era of lies and fictions is itself a pleasure – the mind, as Dr Johnson indicated, delighting to rest on the stability of truth. Both writers appear to have a strong sense of the paradoxical – or perhaps it is merely that the paradoxes that appear in the investigation of men’s treatment of women demand recognition. Susan ...”

“... Islam as the last great adversary. This was a good splashy topic for grand cultural seminars. Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilisations (1996) wrote at length about the West’s confrontation with Islam, ‘a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and obsessed by the inferiority of their power’. Today ...”

“... in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush ‘wrapped around his little finger’, the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said in ...”