Search Results

“... a rejection of the fusionism developed at the National Review in the 1950s under the editorship of William Buckley, which ultimately saw Reagan – and Thatcher – take power by combining neoliberal capitalism with social conservatism. The ten National Conservative principles stipulate that ‘the free market cannot be absolute’ and that the Bible ‘should ...”

“... is enough to ensure that no one recognises him, and he happily resumes his study of long-forgotten Christian heresies. ‘Paul Pennyfeather would never have made a hero,’ Waugh says in his best deadpan, and indeed he is barely present in his own novel. He remains entirely unfazed by extreme vicissitude and undismayed by the moral imbeciles he encounters, not ...”

“... over ten thousand deaths), it comes to seem probable that the geo-political opening undertaken by William Casey, McFarlane, North and company was nothing less than an attempted coup whose goal was either the fomenting of prolonged instability in Iran or the accession to power of some person or group less hostile to the US and Israel. The man publicly ...”

“... Kennedy brothers) conducted a campaign to discredit King. The organisation’s assistant director, William Sullivan, compiled from the Bureau’s wiretaps and bugs a tape of the noises of the civil rights leader’s extramarital activities. He sent it to King with a letter threatening to expose him; purporting to be a ‘Negro’, the letter-writer proposed ...”

“... Macdonald, who introduced her to people at the Partisan Review and the New Yorker, including William Maxwell, who became one of her first editors. Her first book of short stories, published in 1963, is dedicated to Vivante. Through Maxwell she got to know Muriel Spark, whose New Yorker period was at its height in 1962; they called each other ...”

“... with ostensibly dead subject-matter. For instance, Herbert’s ‘A Wreath’, which explores the Christian idea that humility contains a greater glory. For most non-Christian readers (and for a few Christians) this proposition can hardly seem the red-hot tip it once was. It is no longer news. No one is going to reel away ...”

“... to witnessing one was to spit, to avoid contamination. In Europe, from the beginning of the Christian era up to the Renaissance, the condition was usually considered a sign of demonic possession, black magic or witchcraft. At best, it was evidence of a wicked character. (Kent to Oswald in King Lear: ‘A plague upon your epileptic visage!’) But there ...”

“... the bulk of humanity to eternal damnation, however virtuously they might strive to meet their Christian and social obligations. Himself prone to despair, he warned his audiences against ‘irreligious sadness’ and commended the ‘joy’ and ‘cheerful conversation’ accessible to upright hearts. The new edition​ of Donne’s sermons, a ...”

“... Dante Gabriel Rossetti​ could always cheer himself up by belittling William Morris. At the top of a letter to Jane Morris in 1868, he scribbled a crest for ‘The Bard and Petty Tradesman’ in which Morris, plucking a lyre beneath a laurel tree, is back-to-back with his double, who is leaning over his shop counter ...”

“... described a public figure as a homosexual, let alone defined him as one, let alone in an obituary. William Rees-Mogg had, apparently, decided that anything less would be anodyne. This same Mogg has written elsewhere of a psychic and political link between Maynard Keynes the homosexual and Keynes the promiscuous debaucher of the currency, tying this in turn to ...”

“... of Pat Buchanan, the neolithic challenger to George Bush’s renomination in 1992, and William Buckley, the acidulous Catholic pundit, while making us uncomfortable about longstanding liberal assumptions? This brief volume is not an intellectual ‘life review’, to borrow a gerontological term, but a solemn reflection on the philosophical ...”

“... Barnsley, Edinburgh, the Best of British Authors campaign, the Best of Young British Authors, Christian Book Fortnight, the Spring Military Book Campaign, National Children’s Book Week, Map and Guide Month, Thriller Week ... And the Hungarian book trade is necessarily a great deal more centralised than the British. There are far fewer publishers – not ...”

“... When William Tyndale had completed his 1526 New Testament he set about learning Hebrew and translated from the original, with the aid of Luther’s version, the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, which he issued in 1530. The signs are that Tyndale’s immersion in its patriarchal narratives and legal codes transformed his doctrinal views – in contrast to Luther, who tended always to regard the Old Testament as an embarrassment at best and a Jewish conspiracy at worst – and inaugurated that strange elevation of the Old Testament which still marks English and American culture ...”

“... back in Shit-Town, who treated her horribly when she was somebody else with a double-barrelled Christian name? You get the picture. The past won’t leave AnnieLee alone and she has to be beaten up by a couple of bogeymen who always seem able to find her and get into her room. Hold the bus: there’s one nice guy, he’s called Ethan and he’s handsome ...”

“... nicks the jelly, it’s all commandingly impersonal. The servicing of ‘the soft machine’ (as William Burroughs called the body) proceeds to anaesthetising muzak, and tomorrow or the next day my mother, only a little sore, will start to see the world again through her new synthetic lens. For me, there will just be a faint twinge, thinking how this keyhole ...”