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“... its time, the book has had its admirers – my battered 1970s paperback carries endorsements from Richard Hughes, Naomi Mitchison and C.S. Lewis, and Auden was an early fan. (Auden was a patron saint of lost causes. He was also the only major writer to stand up for Laura Riding.) But mostly, the sort of people who get their opinions published have lashed it ...”

“... on white-owned farms being washed away by the rain. He became fond of the country, then run by Ian Smith’s white minority government in defiance of the rest of the world, including its former colonial master, Britain, and considers Smith’s Rhodesia a great agricultural success story. By that time the war between black ...”

“... was another name for ‘excellence’. In the campus emergency of 1968 he even publicly endorsed Richard Nixon. In general, however, Strauss eschewed official bromide or partisan pronouncement; that was the role not of the teacher but of the taught. The veiled pole star of Strauss’s journey through the past was Nietzsche, the one modern thinker who – he ...”

“... over all the drawers in the work table in the spare room. Blakey rolls her eyes, sits down, pulls Richard Rorty out of her bag and prepares to wait for several hours.I guess I left this part out earlier: that I’m as ‘arty’ as my old mum. Can’t help it: it’s a mutant gene, like homosexuality. And though I can neither draw nor paint I’m fairly good ...”

“... minister. I canvassed for Labour in 1964. At Private Eye, where I used to spend a lot of time, Richard Ingrams said: ‘Why don’t you compile “The Thoughts of Chairman Harold”? Just dig out the best quotes from him, and Ralph Steadman will illustrate them.’ So my first book was compiling all those wonderful anti-imperialist quotes from Wilson – I ...”

“... about Ezra Pound. It was very lively so he was recruited.He wrote on Elizabeth Bishop and Richard Wilbur for the ‘Review’. And on Lowell?No, I don’t think on Lowell, but he wrote well on those two and others. He wrote various things in the later issues. I’d certainly moved to London by then. We’d published about, I don’t know, ten or ...”

“... outlook in 25 years. He has already seen off Schröder’s attempt to install a wan version of Richard Branson as Minister of the Economy, and shaken the composure of the Bundesbank. The direction of the Government, of course, will not be set by the SPD leadership alone. The rules of any German coalition give significant leverage to the lesser partner. The ...”

“... and readers rarely couple the names of Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson,’ Janet Adam Smith would write.In the houses where James’s novels are a long row in the study, most of the Stevensons are up in the nursery or in the schoolroom … Yet in their lifetime the two men were linked, not only by the closest ties of personal affection, but by a ...”

“... is of interest also. Without checking, I can think of Marx’s open indebtedness to Hegel, to Adam Smith, to the ‘Blue Books’ of the Victorian factory inspectorate, to Balzac and to Charles Darwin. In other words, Berlin was being vulgar when it must decently be presumed that he knew better. Of his other subjects, not even Joseph de Maistre receives such ...”

“... in the flats above and below don’t even know there’s been a fire. This was something else.’ Richard Welsh is a senior officer with the London Fire Brigade. His pager went off at 1.18 a.m. ‘Initially they had six machines there,’ he said. ‘Then they asked for eight, and then ten, and then 15, 20, and then 25. I’m hearing that on the way there, so ...”