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“... be said for holding a political party together. This puritanical approach to the nitty-gritty of day-to-day politics begins to set the teeth on edge when Owen condemns Wilson for being obsessed with plots against him, on almost the same page as he reveals how deeply he himself was involved in those all too real plots. Even ...”

“... eventually committed suicide. Nancy adored him and he her, and they telephoned each other every day. Nancy and Phyllis also adored one another and were heartbroken when Phyllis had to go back to Reggie in the States. But in due course she, too, got a divorce, and then she was back with Nancy and the Pytchley, and in love with the Hon. Henry ...”

“... British Empire seemed at its zenith and Kipling and Newbolt were the most flourishing poets of the day. After ‘much falling’, Lionel Johnson had made his legendary descent to death from a bar stool, and Yeats’s other companions were no longer to be found in the Cheshire Cheese. The ‘Nineties’ were well over; Ezra Pound had not yet arrived in ...”

“... elements and its ‘Catholic complexion’, ignoring a great number of inconvenient facts. Douglas Hyde, a Protestant and the founder of the Gaelic League, receives two sentences. The contributions of Alice Milligan, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Constance Markievicz are ignored, presumably because they too were Protestants. So are the contributions of ...”

“... but both men compel all around them to react to their idle remarks, mistakes and fantasies. On the day President Macron visited Britain, to take just one recent example, Johnson declared that he wanted to build a bridge across the Channel, and that became the headline. Trump and Johnson are ‘real-time’ politicians: they dominate the rolling news cycle, and ...”

“... setting, and in the early autumn of 1832 Pickersgill made the journey to Rydal Mount. During the day the poet would sit for the painter beneath an open skylight in the high garret of the house. When the light failed the two men turned to talking and walking in the garden. One evening, just after the sun had set, something flashed across the sky and fell into ...”

“... of criminal justice histories much more sceptical and critical than the first. Writers such as Douglas Hay, E.P. Thompson, Michael Ignatieff, and especially Michel Foucault, retold the story in a much more analytical and sophisticated way, showing how criminal justice developments were tied into wider social movements such as the rise of capitalism, the ...”

“... It was in May of that year that Oscar Wilde received a ‘very pathetic’ letter from Lord Alfred Douglas, of whom he had hitherto been no more than a casual acquaintance, appealing to him for help with regard to a rentboy who was threatening blackmail, and inaugurating thereby a friendship which came to fruition three years later in libel suits, bankruptcy ...”

“... of critical-interpretative means. The more so when they are the work of poet-scholars such as C. Day-Lewis and Robert Fitzgerald or of so remarkable a stylist as Jackson Knight (time and again, one finds oneself reverting to his lapidary, taut prose-version when trying to get the original into focus). It is hoped, says the editor, that this assemblage ...”

“... and depths and angers which were undredged, and probably unfathomable. A one-time secretary of Douglas Cleverdon (probably Stevie’s most sympathetic and certainly her most gifted BBC producer) muttered to me one day in 1958: ‘That woman is a witch.’ Stevie could disconcert people, as well as enliven and charm ...”

“... are the press barons and their editors: Henry Nannen, Rupert Murdoch, Frank Giles and Charles Douglas-Home. That Trevor-Roper should have ‘taken the bona fides of the editor’ – of Stern – ‘as a datum’ passes belief. Probably he has never read the magazine. However, journalists, excluding proprietors, generally have a better nose for phonies ...”

“... to find well-preserved stone soldiers. Like Hughes, he shares an interest in war poets – Keith Douglas, for example – and refers to them approvingly in several poems. One of Longley’s favourite manoeuvres is to connect the First World War (or, say, the Trojan War) with the conflict recently ended in Northern Ireland. Several fine poems at the heart of ...”

“... robustly moralistic William Haley, the rather prissy William Rees-Mogg, or the crusading Charles Douglas-Home. Paul Dacre, on the other hand, isn’t just ‘rather different’ from these three. He is entirely different, belonging to a category of journalism quite distinct from theirs. Not only is it tabloid in the sense of being aimed at a mass ...”

“... still wedded to ‘their’ service and its traditions, to which they add characteristic present-day prejudices. The US navy has always been divided into rival professional ‘tribes’, of surface ships, airmen and submariners. Submarines are important in the modern service, so it is essential that they should be prominent in its history, and numerous books ...”

“... India and China – stepped up their purchases. By August, Russia was making up to $800 million a day from oil and gas, muffling the impact of Western sanctions. Yet while in the short term the surge in oil prices has benefited Russia, in the long run its prospects as an energy exporter look less solid. Last year, the EU imported 40 per cent of its natural ...”