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“... Head: he can’t keep them out of the narrative. Recently, when he found the tempestuous Melanie Griffith in a House corridor (she was there to lobby against the cancellation of funding for public television and the arts: another joint Gingrich-Murdoch enterprise), the Speaker crept up and asked ‘Would you like to see my dinosaur?’ He has a Tyrannosaurus ...”

“... active and gentlemanly-looking; his age is about 30 years.’ Such was the picture of the young Michael Davitt, Fenian suspect, produced by the police detective who was watching him in 1869. (In fact, he was working-class, and 24 years old.) Somewhat later, after seven years’ penal servitude, he was seen by the Irish Parliamentarian F.H.O’Donnell as ...”

“... this attribution has been made with particular force in recent decades, most compellingly by M. Griffith in The Authenticity of ‘Prometheus Bound’ (1977). In a recent edition of the play in translation, Michael Ewans argues that ‘in dramatic style and technique, as well as language and poetic style, Prometheus is ...”

“... it was a left hook which put him away after 93 seconds (two seconds more than it took to deal with Michael Spinks last year). The Guardian reporter said the critical punch sounded ‘like an axe going into wet wood’. On TV it looked less impressive. Besides, Mailer used that image to describe the death of Benny Paret in Madison Square Garden 27 years ago at ...”

“... Is there anything stranger than a pop star out of time? Before Elvis Presley, before Michael Jackson, there was Al Jolson – ‘the most popular entertainer of the first half of the 20th century,’ as Michael Rogin describes him. Eyes wide and mouth agape, arms outstretched and face painted black, Jolson concludes his performance in The Jazz Singer (1927) down on one knee, serenading the delighted actress who plays his mother in a voice as strong and piercing as a foghorn ...”

“... undistracted by ambition. Boorman may be the most inspired and wayward of English directors since Michael Powell.Not that Powell would have attempted Point Blank. Not that anyone in 1967 had reason to think that a young Englishman raised on the leafy edges of south London (Carshalton, and later Shepperton) would know how to go to Los Angeles (and San ...”

“... boy poet and his spirited sister. The weed’s name is Noel: Mrs Briggs has discovered that Noel Griffith, a friend of Reynolds and Barron, was another of Nesbit’s lovers. His twin – a continuously praised creature whom Mrs Briggs sees as ‘an image of E. Nesbit’s energetic and dominating side, standing guard over a less confident but more creative ...”

“... These attacks have been concerted, populist and unfair. They have been led by the Home Secretary, Michael Howard (a frequent and bad loser in the courts), and the Chairman of his Party, Brian Mawhinney, who has urged Tory hangers and floggers to write in and complain about lenient sentencing on the part of judges, and has put out as party propaganda a ...”

“... no reference to Republicanism’. Similarly, and just as surprisingly, Townshend quotes Michael Collins, who had fought in 1916 and three years later became president of the IRB Supreme Council, insisting that ‘the cause was not the Irish Republic’ but ‘liberation from English occupation’.* Certainly it ‘did not change the relationship ...”

“... parse and digest. Coetzee won his Booker Prizes for portrayals of South Africa (Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace). Everett gained recognition for a novel about an African American novelist, Erasure (2001), and was included on this year’s Booker shortlist for The Trees, a counterfactual comedy set in 2018, in which Emmett Till returns to Mississippi ...”

“... consequences such intercourse entails upon them.’ After this effusion, surpassing even Mervyn Griffith-Jones’s remarks in leading the prosecution of Lady Chatterley’s Lover 80 years later, it was not surprising that Jessel ordered custody of Mabel to be given to Besant. Annie then launched an appeal for a judicial separation, which Jessel ...”

“... and considered re-evaluation of classic American cinema. Godard recognised Hitchcock and Lang and Griffith as great masters – alongside Rossellini, Renoir and Eisenstein – but he also recognised the strengths of marginal and eccentric Hollywood productions, the odd films out of the studio system. Talking about his second film, Le Petit Soldat, he invoked ...”

“... to the newspapers attacked the influx of Jews, others also came to their defence, most notably Michael Davitt, the leader of the Land League. ‘The Jews have never to my knowledge done any injury to Ireland,’ he wrote in a letter to the Freeman’s Journal in 1893. ‘Like our own race, they have endured a persecution the records of which will for ever ...”

“... was ‘the first man to come from acting to directing’. Thereby erasing at a stroke D.W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier. To say nothing of Chaplin. But, as Gareth Evans told the faithful few at the London College of Communication, performance spaces kindly disposed towards historic films were disappearing fast in the ...”

“... BROOKS.’ Over the years, the rowdy writers’ room also included Simon, Gelbart, Carl Reiner, Michael Stewart, Joseph Stein and Woody Allen. Tolkin, who was head writer on all Caesar’s shows in the 1950s, said that ‘no other comedian needed material to open his mouth as much as he did, being an uneducated lout.’The writers’ room was a storytelling ...”