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“... Inflicted both on our congeners and on other species, it marks us out, in the words of the King of Brobdingnag, as a pernicious race of little odious vermin. Even Richard Rorty, the self-styled postmodernist liberal, felt able to pronounce that cruelty was ‘the worst thing we do’. Torture has posed a problem for ...”

“... immoraliste, E.T.A. (Amadeus) Hoffmann, Byron, Kierkegaard (the aesthetic v. the ethical) and Richard Strauss, to Shaw and Eric Linklater. The sociological aspects of the ever-interesting topic are not neglected. Taking his tip from the 354 acknowledged bastards of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of ...”

“... which had a complex production history, is authorless (Rushdie’s view); or else other directors, King Vidor especially, made important contributions and the film has several authors. Fleming, who went on to make A Guy Named Joe and Adventure, and Gone with the Wind, did not have a strong visual style. He was a producer’s director, assuming a role in the ...”

“... jam … Were the mummy not in it I could and would take the thing and play with it. But there is a King of Egypt already and so I bring the body to his feet. The Englishman he was talking about, cursed and pulped, was Lieutenant Walter Herbert Ingram, who had fought in South Africa in the Anglo-Zulu War and travelled up the Nile to Khartoum in the hope of ...”

“... a lot of money. But the more one looks at it, the worse it gets. Behind the apparent simplicity of Richard Branson’s Virgin having bought the Rock lies a more complicated story in which the bulk of the money for the deal comes from Branson’s partner, W.L. Ross and Co, a specialist in distressed companies and undervalued shares (one of Wilbur Ross’s ...”

“... generally referred to as the ‘Baines Note’ and the ‘Remembrances’. The first, compiled by Richard Baines, is exclusively concerned with Marlowe’s atheistic opinions, while the second reports the words of another man, Richard Cholmeley, who is said to have been converted, or ‘persuaded’, to atheism by ...”

“... of biographical fact but the artistic shaping of it. No one would accuse Peter Gwyn, author of The King’s Cardinal, of confusing life with art. His intentions are too austere to risk that imputation. Although his important and very long book proclaims itself a ‘biography’ of Thomas Wolsey, it fulfils few of the expectations raised by the term. There is ...”

“... it presented itself as the preserver of a hallowed constitution. It claimed to be fighting for ‘king and Parliament’, professed undying loyalty to Charles, and blamed the situation not on him but on evil advisers and established institutions. Those justifications were repeated regularly, if with diminishing conviction, throughout the war of 1642-46. Yet ...”

“... in flowing white, claims to advise a number of political figures around the world, including King Hussein of Jordan, President Mobutu, Rajiv Gandhi and Richard Nixon. He is currently on his way to visit ex-President Marcos in Honolulu. He has met Mrs Thatcher several times. Plainly a figure of some significance ...”

“... founder of Providence, Rhode Island), takes in memorials to Brigham Young, Martin Luther King and Thomas Merton, and ends at the grave of Thomas Jefferson – has a distinctly antiquarian flavour. Ruthven believes that myths ‘become plausible when canonised by arts that penetrate the collective cultural psyche’, and he seems happier visiting ...”

“... Michael Roberts’s New Signatures (February 1932), which included contributions from Julian Bell, Richard Eberhart, William Empson, Cecil Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, William Plomer and Lehmann himself. Through Spender he met Christopher Isherwood. The friendship with Spender from the very first seemed edgy, uncertain and uneasy, but durable for all ...”

“... Puritans like Cartwright and Perkins (though Dr Kendall would not call him a Puritan), later King James I, all agreed on the essentials of theology. This orthodoxy was challenged by Laudians in the 1630s, by sectaries in the Forties and Fifties. By the end of the century, Calvinism was no longer the intellectual force it had been. It was not stressed by ...”

“... must have informed his thinking when he came to consider the authority, rights and duties of a king, but the commonplace book isn’t a record of a mind made up; it shows someone sifting information and weighing evidence.McDowell reads Milton’s early writings as a programme of poetic apprenticeship in which he tried out a wide range of genres: poems on ...”

“... She has been celebrated as a stylish genre defier, in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith and Richard Price – and her books sell. French’s opening salvo was leaving one of the chief mysteries in her first novel, In the Woods, unsolved. Since then, she has demonstrated remarkable range. The classic detective series follows a single familiar ...”

“... up passengers at Paddington, Edgware Road, Baker Street, Great Portland Street, Euston Square and King’s Cross, before turning south to Farringdon. The line was built by the cut-and-cover method, which involved digging a large trench down the middle of the Euston and Pentonville Roads. Ingenious arrangements had been made to capture the exhaust steam ...”