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“... by Chardin, its inhabitants entranced and absorbed among everyday objects, blocks of colour and light overlaid with a sober, reverential geometry. Sardou was horrified. ‘Which Robespierre had she known?’ He proceeded to demolish her memories. Silly woman! Sentiment was blocking her access to her own history.It is possible – if fiction is your business ...”

“... Hill himself spoke of ‘the constant presence of humour throughout my poetry, and even a light-heartedness which I think many critics have either wilfully neglected to notice or innocently overlooked’. The only disappointment when his immense collected poems Broken Hierarchies appeared in 2013 was Hill’s decision not to reprint most of the notes ...”

“... a corrosively individualist conception of life. Three recent semi-official publications throw some light on the relation between this conception and the reality of contemporary British society. In January 2009 the government announced the creation of a Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, chaired by Alan Milburn, a ...”

“... was an explanation – alcoholism, misogyny, sublimated attraction – even if it only came to light decades after the fact.There was another reason Streisand wasn’t enjoying her first years in LA: her marriage was falling apart. Gould was jealous of her success and addicted to gambling. Both had affairs. ‘The parallels to Fanny Brice and Nicky ...”

“... Kidnapped was really our favourite, but we couldn’t call our daughter David, or name her after Alan Breck. She’d have to be named for the sequel.Like all my contemporaries, in those first years when the contraceptive pill was widely available, I only half believed I could coerce my body, and suspected that it might have some filthy tricks in store; but ...”

“... melodious cooing and flutter of wings on the lawn.’ At the front entrance Stevenson placed a ‘light’ in a model of the Skerryvore lighthouse, and he put a ship’s bell in the garden. (The original lighthouse was built by his uncle Alan, 12 miles south-west of Tiree.) Fanny put benches here and there, so that ...”

“... he argues, philosophy becomes a kind of narrative activity, rehearsing its own pre-history in the light of its present-day interests and concerns. In fact, this is just what philosophers have always done – constructed some kind of legitimating narrative by which to explain their position – though the storytelling is usually presumed to have an end when it ...”

“... era was cold and dark and bleak, but there was a touch of pink in the east and a sense of the light slowly but steadily strengthening. In 1945, more than 70 per cent of the population was working-class, employed either as rural labourers or industrial workers. Over the next decade, their story would be one of growing prosperity and wellbeing, of widening ...”

“... second debating club, the Edmund Burke Society, whose set-piece occasions were meant to be more light-hearted. She presided with a meat tenderiser in place of a gavel; the motions she chose for debate included ‘That this House thanks Heaven for little girls’. Her boyfriend, Philip May, who was two years below her, succeeded her as president of the ...”

“... interesting word here is the one that hardly ever appears in Auden: ‘specially’. Given the light drum roll of ‘reverently, passionately’, one might have expected ‘especially’ to complete the triad, but ‘specially’ is more like a word a child might use – just a little more offhand, too taken up with play to coddle any distinction the aged ...”

“... Hobsbawm did not, concluding that the Soviet invasion, however agonising, was a necessary step in light of the danger of counter-revolution: ‘If we had been in the position of the Soviet government, we should have intervened.’ Hobsbawm was asked, over and over, to explain that decision – especially after the Cold War ended, when it really didn’t ...”

“... arriving train was heavily congested and the unaccustomed Tory – who may or may not have been Alan Clark – recoiled from the throng revealed by the opening doors, suggesting that they might do better to walk along the platform to the restaurant car. Jeffrey Archer may have dreamed of routes as straight as an executive jet’s runway, but McKie knows ...”

“... a hint of condescension here. There are open seams in the plotting. Katherine’s besotted editor, Alan, works on her new novel, Consequences, till the last possible moment: ‘It had been a terrible wrench when he handed the typescript to his assistant to get it biked over to the Elysian people on that final afternoon.’ So the prize isn’t for published ...”

“... the whole city, as the impact ripples through the system. It is chaos theory, LA style: A long red light in Santa Monica triggers a backup in Watts … Some three hundred municipal engineers, on a sick-out, are picketing on the same streets on which the limos are trying to get to the Oscars … Some of the calls Patel receives are from engineers wondering ...”

“... mind hard work. She was helpful. When the two men who ran the press, Roy Trevelion and Tenebris Light, went on holiday to Gran Canaria, she willingly redecorated their flat. Editorial routines didn’t need to be solemn: on one occasion she and Roy sifted poetry submissions by reading them aloud in a Barnsley accent. Anything that didn’t produce ...”