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“... to learn – and surprised by my ignorance – that the apostle had been buried in this far-flung corner of Tamil Nadu. The cathedral of San Thome, rebuilt in 1893, is a large neo-Gothic structure in wedding-cake white not far from the southern end of Chennai’s Marine Beach. I saw his tomb in the crypt beneath it, and the displayed sliver of his bone, and ...”

“... back their dead – in fishing boats, or rolled up in carpets – rather than let them lie in a corner of a foreign field, however much ‘a body of England’s’ might consecrate and alter its character. But since then, the exact place of death has taken hold of people’s imaginations: wayside shrines spring up, with cards and messages and bouquets and ...”

“... Patience, with hands clasped, looks down on the huddled, robed figure of Grief, shrinking into the corner of the composition. Kauffman’s classical histories, though typically more orthodox in their subject matter, foregrounded male deeds and exchanges but drew the eye elsewhere. Her Hector Upbraiding Paris for His Retreat from Battle (1770) shows the two ...”

“... Executive with David Austin (who would become a lifelong collaborator) and Ridgeley’s brother Paul. Michael was lead vocalist but hadn’t yet found the right style: his attempts at a Jamaican accent fell flat. A fifth member, Andrew Leaver, directed homophobic slurs at James Sullivan, a gay American student friend in whom Michael had confided his ...”

“... Kaminskys might have been among them, had it not been for the efforts of Adolfo’s older brother, Paul, who successfully petitioned the Argentine consul in Paris. In January 1944, they were released. ‘Why us, and why not them?’ Adolfo wondered. In Paris, he bought chemistry books from bouquinistes along the Seine and taught himself to make explosives. But ...”

“... I thought: this is not true, then I realised the enormity. I had been pushed into yet another corner, this time for keeps … The perception that knowing you’re dying makes you feel more alive is an error. I’m less alive. There’s less life to lead. I can’t give 100 per cent attention to anything – part of me is thinking about my health.There ...”

“... us, we have never acquired the adult mind.’ 18 February. Ned Sherrin’s memorial service at St Paul’s, Covent Garden. A friendly service interspersed with songs, some from Sondheim, some from Sherrin and Brahms, but with none of them as tuneful as the hymns. The audience is very responsive, and it’s the only occasion in my experience that the lesson ...”

“... fun in ‘funeral’, to try to replicate the wit and ebullience that’s invariably around the corner in Duke’s jungle.The union of the blues and Chopin is a great moment, Miley leading the ensemble from one musical strain into another as seamlessly as Brancusi carving each subsequent serration on his King of Kings or Ellington swinging Tchaikovsky’s ...”

“... who did not save his life. The end of the book is devoted to hopes for the vaccine and efforts to corner Bill into delivering it, all to no avail. The narrator has been told that the vaccine is no longer effective if the patient has fewer than 200 T-cells; on the last page of the book the narrator has hit 200 and Bill has vanished. (The scandal caused by ...”

“... Balloon glass aloft. ‘He nearly did make it. In fact he just barely may have his own particular corner in the temple of fame. In a brush box? On a shelf? In a nook behind a side, side, side-altar, bearing a rumpled linen cloth, with one electric candle bulb askew? We often prophesied it for one another. In, precisely, January 1932, he achieved a ...”

“... it to Pennsylvania, which was probably just as well. (In his shaggy-dog history of ideas, Madoc, Paul Muldoon imagines the high-minded debacle that would have ensued had they ever got there.) Fiery Southey grew cooler and cooler. He began by suggesting that the party might perhaps work up to the full American dream by way of a small farm in Wales (Coleridge ...”

“... the talk after the viewing trying to find out why, along with The Seventh Seal, Le Mépris, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, it was considered a marvel, and why Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones, charming though it was, failed because it was self-indulgent. Self-indulgence was very often the reason for a film or play to fail in the eyes of Doris and her ...”

“... statutory feet, he puts on his glove again, saying: ‘If you should need me I’m just round the corner’ (i.e. in Arlington House). I ask Miss S. how long she has had the van. ‘Since 1965,’ she says, ‘though don’t spread that around. I got it to put my things in. I came down from St Albans in it and plan to go back there eventually. I’m just ...”

“... stood at a party watching the ever watchable Sontag, who had taken command of the opposite corner of the salon. She was showing us her profile, standing with her arms folded, swathed in scarves, her black mane accented by that theatrical streak of white, scanning the room for traitors.’ What the portraits seldom captured was a quality obscured by ...”

“... hug the wall.’ And so he sets off, charting a course from his desk towards a painting hung in a corner, and from there he continues obliquely towards the door, but is waylaid by his armchair, which he sits in for a while, poking the fire, daydreaming. Then he bestirs himself again, presses north towards his bed, the place where ‘for one half of our ...”