“... a sense of what poems are really up to, as distinct from what critics have tried to make them. John Hollander, himself a fine poet, is such a generalist; and Melodious Guile, to my mind the best of his critical books, takes its place – along with Donald Davie’s Articulate Energy and Winifred Nowottny’s The Language Poets Use – among the very few ...”

“... disconcerted by such friends as Paul Johnson, who believes he would now be a strong Thatcherite, John Wain, who invokes Orwell as an opponent of Arthur Scargill, or in America Norman Podhoretz, who feels sure he would be taking his stand with the ‘neo-conservatives against the Left’. The New York Tribune, Rodden notes, went further and called Orwell the ...”

“... My friend and fellow crime writer John Creasey published more than seven hundred books under some twenty different names. (He also found time to found a political party called rather grandly the All Party Alliance, although a wit said that his only allies were Anthony Morton, Gordon Ashe, Michael Halliday and other Creasey pseudonyms ...”

“... death) did not help his case. Nevertheless a powerful counter-attack was launched on his behalf by John Terraine, and these efforts found some support among the new school of ‘War and Society’ historians such as Professor Brian Bond and the present writer, who argued that Haig’s faults were those of the old Army as a whole, and that the problems he faced ...”

“... restraint. It had been quite like an SDP Conference. The depression which settled over Labour with John Major’s sudden announcement of entry to the ERM and a cut of 1 per cent in interest rates is a measure of the fragility of its confidence, however. Mrs Thatcher had shot its fox, improbable fox though it may be. Neil Kinnock was harshly reminded that every ...”

“... care for everyone. Join her. Join Bill. We can make the future. I remember how I felt listening to John Kennedy’s inaugural address as a 12-year-old schoolgirl. I was excited but anxious, aware that I was too young. It wasn’t yet time for my generation. Perhaps it would be time now. Embarrassed by my reverie and my emotion, I pull myself back to the ...”

“... the United States of America is suddenly a possibility. The aged President Kennedy (Joseph P., not John F.) plans to fly to Berlin for a summit meeting. Since all this is conjecture as to how things might have turned out, it can only be assessed against your own, or other people’s, conjectures. The two best-known novels based on the premise of a German or ...”

“... Pavements considerably, all the while enjoying a well-rounded private life: after an affair with John Gilbert, she took up with young buck Gary Cooper ... You can feel Nemesis coming on with every drop of a name. Sure enough: Her bedroom was chock-a-block with gardenias and tuberoses; it glowed with the flicker of several dozen candles. In this shrine to ...”

“... over the past decade, and a selection, entitled Severe Joy, is listed for publication next year by John Calder. They abound in fantastic, and often very funny, descriptions of the people he disapproves of (such as Mrs Thatcher, Enoch Powell, Ian Paisley, the Royal Family and Jesus Christ) engaged in eccentric forms of sexual intercourse. One might almost ...”

“... to a point a skilled and pleasurable bit of trend-watching in the social and political milieu of John Strickland, a barrister with a distaste for his profession. The distaste is not exceptional, for among the still rich and the newly successful self-mistrust is a norm, and a well-fed and well-upholstered lack of confidence has been absorbed into their ...”

“... others only to learn.’ He does not take the analogy further, but it is worth remembering that John Stuart Mill, precociously crammed with learning which he had to dispense to his brothers, achieved philosophy and personal maturity only at the cost of successive mental breakdowns. John Mill’s progression from the ...”

“... though some very old person today were to remember having met in childhood a person who had seen John Milton’. But we need not suppose that Lyttelton misunderstood what he was being told. Belloc, he recalls, was busy being ‘great fun’. And mere truth came a poor second to immediate effect with Belloc, whether he was setting out to entertain in company ...”

“... his attacks, unscathed, protected by their own sense of themselves. It is a relief to turn to John Lahr’s Automatic Vaudeville, 15 reprinted essays written over the last decade, which go far to confirm his rating as the Leavis of the popular, largely performing arts, though this collection also includes a snatch of reportage on Dallas – at once living ...”

“... thought to be in the same class as oneself. Reviewers solved their problem in various ways. John Carey, in the Sunday Times, explained first that whoever thinks there is anything in structuralism except one or two points that are already obvious is in need of ‘sedation and devoted nursing’. Lodge, however, is not your wilder type of ...”

“... of lyrics, Goddard is the culmination of all his rock ’n’ roll predecessors – Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen – as well as what’s best in funk, soul, reggae – and, of course, the influence of such master saloon singers as Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett. In Goddard’s music ...”