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“... about Enright’s life and work by a variety of writers. This festschrift’s title, Life by Other Means, derives from an Enright poem called ‘Poetical Justice’ which muses rather more ambiguously on the relations between art and life than the stirring phrase might suggest in isolation. Dr Johnson, one of Enright’s touchstones, records how he was so ...”

“... The volunteers agreed to have sex with these men, to infiltrate their social networks, and by that means to find out as much as possible about the extent and organisation of male homosexual activity in Newport. The decoys soon discovered that the Army and Navy YMCA was the most popular hangout for ‘fairies’, by which they referred to men who violated ...”

“... on the European Journal of International Law’s blog, the legalistic treatment of atrocities means that ‘states are given the benefit of the doubt in relation to ongoing abuses’ and ‘this enables other states (and other powerful entities) to appeal to plausible legality in erring on the side of facilitating atrocity in real time’. Our new foreign ...”

“... activity; and his most recent full-length opera, Gawain, has an ambitious verse libretto by David Harsent. Ted Hughes once wrote a libretto for Gordon Crosse. The Story of Vasco, whose subject-matter involves crows, is an interesting opera by a composer who has now, regrettably, stopped composing. The poet John Birtwhistle supplied ...”

“... of balancing the skewed picture of the Crusades in Western scholarship.’ I’m not sure what he means by this. David Hume, in his History of Great Britain (1754-62), denounced the Crusades as ‘the most signal and durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation’. Gibbon considered them to be ...”

“... from territories occupied’ in 1967. The third principle affirmed diplomacy as the only viable means of resolving the conflict and protecting both Israeli and Arab state interests – even at the expense of popular wishes and rights.The 1973 war confirmed that the state of Israel was here to stay and wasn’t going to be defeated militarily. Two months ...”

“... He has been, in his own words, ‘a consistent anti-totalitarian’, though he admits that this means ‘one might have to expose oneself to steadily mounting contradictions.’ He has had to adjust himself, intellectually and geographically, to his growing taste for the United States and his sense of its power to do good in the world. He moved to the US ...”

“... in pursuit of the phantom, before exiting in a more orthodox fashion via the front door. Wyler means this iconic scene to transcend the mere business of narrative in much the same way that the enduring intensity of the passion once stirred between Heathcliff and Cathy will continue to beggar explanation, if not belief. The film’s trailer has after all ...”

“... the case was over the legal costs would be reckoned at £750,000? The author of this book, Mr David Hooper (Eton and Balliol, the blurb tells us), practised at the bar before becoming a solicitor. He acts as an adviser to his present publishers, but, as the blurb also tells us, was not consulted about this particular book. This faintly ironic tone is ...”

“... speak, a new loss of life, and so contribute to the renovation of the language. Another professor, David Lodge, says a good word for the English spoken in Marin County, California, as recorded by Cyra McFadden in The Serial. Marin, a ‘high-energy trip with … happening people’, is near San Francisco, ‘the consciousness-raising capital of the western ...”

“... two days. Then I bought and read in a similar manner – none took me any longer than two days – David Szalay’s three previous novels: London and the South-East (one of the great mocking titles, up there with Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, or Updike’s Memories of the Ford Administration), The Innocent and Spring. I want to say that here is a ...”

“... thus a belief in the continued viability of the pits – to function at all. Francis Beckett and David Hencke quote one journalist’s description of a mining village near Barnsley: The village is not big, nearly all the 300 workers in the pit live here with their families. The wages were never very high … but they have cars and many own their little ...”

“... Party up and down the country, there was no way which the professors of Belgrano Studies, as David Frost has christened us, could have carried on. Many a crusade has been smothered by the great big yawn of the British public. Norton-Taylor is not and never was Tam Dalyell’s or anyone else’s tame journalist. On the contrary, he started by being ...”

“... The earlier plays of David Mamet seemed to spring from a meeting between Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter, as if the characters from The Caretaker or The Homecoming had caught the American anxieties of Death of a Salesman. Pinter is also never far from the later plays, and he directed Oleanna in London; but other, more oblique influences now hover in the air ...”

“... had ceaselessly regulated his own wishes by ‘duty to the outside world’ He casts about for a means of achieving some glimpse of communion with the dead man. The story can fairly be summarised since its meaning and power are vested in the telling. It is David Plante’s manner that will attract or alienate readers. The ...”