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“... Amidst a grief-stricken population Solzhenitsyn wanted to jump for joy. Much as the death of Nicholas I ultimately made the suspension of Dostoevsky’s permanent exile possible, so now events were set in train that would lead to the rise of Khrushchev, de-Stalinisation and Solzhenitsyn’s own rehabilitation. Before this could happen, however, it seemed ...”

“... Street tremble), but the length – almost twelve hours. This was an attempt (as was the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby) to dramatise the whole of a serious book and never mind how long it takes. The distillation and elision that have always been the main concern of adapters suddenly seem out-dated. Harold Pinter’s reduction of Remembrance of Things Past to 163 ...”

“... As Patrick explains to his friend Johnny Hall, ‘I happen to think my mother’s death is the best thing to happen to me since … well, since my father’s death.’ This gruesome story is no doubt given much of its power by the fact that Patrick and his family are portraits from life – ‘uninvented’, as St Aubyn has said. The author was raped by ...”

“... from pre-Presidential days.’ They included Cecil Spring Rice, an Englishman who had served as best man at his wedding and had been in the British Embassies at Berlin, Constantinople and St Petersburg, and Arthur Hamilton Lee, a Tory MP. According to Morris, ‘their urbane, literate reports’ kept Roosevelt up to date ‘with court affairs and privileged ...”

“... religious orders. He was one of the most admired dons of his generation and, for McFarlane, the best evidence of Wyclif’s eminence is that it was almost universally acknowledged, even by his enemies. Even Archbishop Arundel conceded that he was ‘a great clerk’. Evans tells us as much and more about the study and pursuit of logic, philosophy and ...”

“... them and improvised a dance to the music, concluding by pointing to that painting which he felt best expressed what he had just danced. As Butler recounts, in what is really the centrepiece of his book, Kandinsky was so excited by hearing a concert of Schoenberg’s music in 1911 that he wrote immediately to the composer and struck up a relationship with ...”

“... of his own convictions. Not only do they subscribe to his belief that the history of Parliament is best studied through the Commons’ membership, but they also accept his view that that analysis demonstrates the growing political ascendancy of the Lower House. Dr Hasler’s introductory survey adds a great many tables on a great many social questions to those ...”

“... always been suspected (quite correctly) of being homosexual, not suitable for Linden Hills. The best man recites a verse during his congratulatory speech. It is by Walt Whitman – ‘Whoever you are, holding me now in hand ...’ – and the best man has changed ‘he’ to ‘she’ throughout. Only young Willie ...”

“... evening.’ That, to the extent that it’s fair to judge from these letters, is what she liked best: jolly jokes evenings with her friends. She was witty (‘that’s the cosiest Fan tutte I’ve ever heard,’ she said after she and her friends had been listening to it round an open fire with cushions and blankets); gave good, and when she was married to ...”

“... Brotherhood’s strong showing in the 2005 parliamentary elections. Liberal champions, notably Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen in the New York Times, applauded the protesters for focusing on Egypt, rather than on America or Israel: the ‘Arab mind’, Cohen declared, was at last showing signs of maturity, shedding its obsession with American and Zionist ...”

“... and champion of the equally un-Sacheverellite causes of Whiggism and politeness. However, those best acquainted with the adult Sacheverell remarked on his angularity and chilly pomposity. This unattractive character nevertheless became the darling of a Tory public which responded enthusiastically to his audacious preaching and swooned at his pose of willing ...”

“... on the existence, or at least the appearance, of German espionage, yet despite his bureau’s best efforts, it was unable to locate a single German spy during its first two years of operations. This did not stop MI5 securing several prosecutions. In September 1910, Siegfried Helm, a German national, was arrested on suspicion of espionage. MI5 had never ...”

“... or wrestled with – this balance of the necessary and the random throughout her career. Her best novels, which also happen to be those that appeal most to her readers – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means and A Far Cry from Kensington – moisten the stringency of her vision with what one might call the wetness of life. They are ...”

“... at psychoanalysis, or to unlock Elizabeth’s bedchamber. From the beginning Elizabeth did her best to resist scrutiny, protecting her privacy as best she could. She wrote as a teenager in about 1548: ‘It is … rather characteristic of my nature not only not to say in words as much as I think in my mind, but ...”

“... in Basilicata, a remote province at the instep of the Italian boot, was the first and remains the best-known of the various forms of documentary fiction that appeared in the late 1940s and early 1950s.There was also a photographic analogue, abetted by the proliferation after 1945 of new illustrated journals such as Il politecnico, and various ethnographic ...”