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“... he took hold of my ear. I stood in the corner near the insect case, remembering my bike. I had the John Bull Puncture Repair Kit in my pocket: glass paper, rubber solution, patches, chalk and grater, spare valves. I was ‘riding dead’ – freewheeling downhill with my arms folded and my eyes shut, looking Mr Ray in the eye. Every time I looked round he ...”

“... desk, was a more engaging and dramatic affair than the traditional podium-based and town-hall meeting style debates that preceded it. Not that it broke the pattern of the series as a whole. Although the final debate saw more disagreement on substance (and more detail about policy), the most memorable section dealt with the campaign itself. As ...”

“... of freelance delegates, all capable of keeping their eyes to the front, on the platform – no droolers, no crisp packets. By Saturday afternoon, a certain mid-term weariness is evident (so many readings survived, so many still to come); the post-traumatic shock of being allowed into the showpiece. King’s ...”

“... apartment in Tel Aviv, and while struggling to put on my shoes, cursed the moment I failed to say no. The bottom right of my abdomen was aching. My rendezvous with Israel’s biggest strategic threats looked like a very bad idea. I could not have believed that by the end of the day I would have rather had open-heart surgery than listen to any further analysis ...”

“... Put law in the context of a novel, and it reveals something about its nature, since it has no choice but to submit to the movement and equivocations of words. Schlink’s writing is oddly circular and self-referring, as if there is a problem that he can’t get away from, or that won’t go away. Homecoming can be read as an extended footnote to The ...”

“... insurance policies on him too. Seven months later, Dorcas herself was found dead in a car. She had no serious injuries apart from a fractured hyoid bone, which can sometimes indicate strangulation but can also be broken during autopsies; the medical examiner recorded ‘acute respiratory distress’ as the cause of death. Insurance policies? Check: 17 of ...”

“... exhibited to an eager public in thirty venues over the course of the following year. There was no apparent guilt about this deception, no winking admission, at least in public: Fenton simply wanted to play a part in the story. ‘Photographic Van’ (1855) ‘Eighth Hussars Cooking Hut’ (1855) ‘General ...”

“... It’s been two years since the last one, so it must be time for a new book of poems by John Ashbery. Like the old James Bond films, Ashbery’s late instalments arrive punctually, and you buy your ticket knowing what to expect: a suave cartoon with ridiculous gadgets, clever one-liners and last-minute escapes. ‘So Long, Santa’, the penultimate poem in Ashbery’s previous collection, A Worldly Country (2007), worried that ‘it will come round again/and we won’t be ready ...”

“... still accumulates, and how often this month’s masterpieces turn into the schlock of yesteryear. No: the fact is that movie critics have changed. There was once a time when Roger Manvell’s 1944 Pelican Book, Film, was a central work in most British film-buffs’ libraries. There were the Russian early fathers, of course, all tractors and montage; there was ...”

“... during this period. This means we can trace the genesis of the poem with far greater precision.No less important, the editors include almost every letter documenting the protracted negotiations that led to the publication of The Waste Land in the Dial (circulation: 9600), then the foremost literary journal in America. As part of the final publication ...”

“... was the only surviving portion. In 2002, Worden identified the deist and republican John Toland as the person most likely to have transformed ‘Ludlow, the builder of a godly commonwealth’ of the 1650s into ‘Ludlow, the radical Whig or “real Whig”’ of the 1690s.This enduring deception would appeal to Robert Harris, whose Selling ...”

“... are frightened by these urban mad; respectable citizens good-naturedly ignore them as being of no more account than pigeons and as inscrutable as gang graffiti. In New York and Los Angeles (where they parody the consumer-mad host society by heaping their possessions in supermarket trollies), they are called the ‘homeless’. There is, as far as I ...”

“... Inside, the atmosphere resembles that of an airport terminal. It isn’t just the decor: the large hall, the white walls, the rows of functional seating facing the courtroom doors and the large windows through which the light streams in. Today, the youth court is in session, as it is once a week. Almost all the court’s clientele are dressed in ...”

“... near-homophonous Alistair MacNeill; two of his screenplays had already been turned into novels by John Denis; and a third screenplay is undergoing similar treatment by Simon Gandolfi. In this curious world there are occasional legal hiccups. One such, not so much a hiccup as a cardiac arrest, recently befell HarperCollins when they were prosecuted and heavily ...”

“... reverential as its title. After maintaining that Cromwell’s ‘Grandeur he deriv’d from Heav’n alone’, that all his ‘parts [were] so equal perfect’, and that ‘Peace was the Prize of all his toils and care,’ Dryden predicted that ‘His Ashes in a peaceful Urne [would] rest.’ It was not to be. Less than two years later, Dryden was addressing ...”