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“... believe that one man could cause so much to happen – from Snow White to a coonskin-cap craze to Mary Poppins to Hollywood’s move into broadcast television and finally to theme parks in Anaheim and Orlando – then you adopt the model of the lone genius, almost to the point of holy respect. After all, Disney did help name every dwarf. He figured out how to ...”

“... an extended leadership contest. Duncan Smith had himself been a minor ‘bastard’, as had David Davis, the early favourite to succeed Howard. The Conservatives knew that they were seen, in the words of Theresa May, Duncan Smith’s party chairwoman, as the ‘nasty party’, but were too worried about upsetting the ‘core vote’ to do much about it. Hague ...”

“... views of her own, as Lisa Shapiro has argued.The late 17th-century English philosopher Mary Astell benefited from a series of amenable gatekeepers: her father, who allowed her to study with a Cambridge-educated uncle; her uncle, who saw her potential and decided to nurture it, and who left his large library to her; the archbishop of ...”

“... formal experimentation whose work Wolff did include (among them Lorrie Moore, Denis Johnson and Mary Robison) did not, in the stories Wolff selected, engage with the question of how a story convinces us of its reality. This is not to say that the stories Wolff selected were not interesting stories. Rather, it became abundantly clear that he had very narrow ...”

“... liked to relate.The spirit of revolt did, however, run in the family. His maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson, married Lewis Sheridan Leary in 1858. The following year, Leary was recruited by John Brown for his suicidal raid on Harpers Ferry, and the bullet-riddled shawl that was eventually returned to Mary was in due ...”

“... friends Ed and Helene Dorn. The lack of variety is puzzling (why not a few of her letters to Lydia Davis, say?) and the letters are not interesting in themselves, but they are worth reading to hear how much more herself she is in the stories. In the letters, curiously, she sounds like just anyone. She even goes through that phase where you open with ...”

“... strictly for the English, like Arnold’s Celticism – but not the patriotic ballads of Thomas Davis. Those who are truly purist about Irish traditional music, including a number of Northern Protestants, deplore both. The processing of contemporary Northern Ireland is a more delicate matter than yet another inquest on the Irish Literary Revival, although ...”

“... on. The Fram began to heave a little on the swell, as she steamed southwards down the Davis Strait. Several of the delegates turned as green as their convictions and vanished below. A small pod of whales passed a mile away, blowing lusty spires of breath. How strange it is that science and religion seem to have changed sides on this matter of ...”

“... Avenue (also known as Malcolm X Boulevard), which runs north-south through Harlem. One character, Mary Roe, is a police detective who has a phobia about crossing state lines: ‘her inability to pick up a suspect in Connecticut or interview a witness in Pennsylvania nearly deep-sixed her career.’ This psychological version of an electronic tag might ...”

“... of Virtue and the Elimination of Vice. At the end of July, Ijaz brought his family for tea. Mary-Beth was a small woman but seemed swollen beneath the skin; spiritless, freckled, limp, she was a faded redhead who seemed huddled into herself, unused to conversation. A silent daughter with eyes like dark stars had been trussed up for the visit in a frilly ...”

“... an accolade bestowed in 1924, on the occasion of a special visit by King George V and Queen Mary towards the end of the season. The programme culminated, at the king’s request, with the Sea Songs (he found ‘Rule, Britannia!’ a ‘jolly fine tune’, infinitely to be preferred to ‘The Red Flag’). The BBC’s sponsorship and transmissions ...”

“... find the intellectual energy and even self-importance of these pieces refreshing. I can’t share Mary Poovey’s belief that Wall Street’s recurrent financial crises will be overcome only when we (whoever ‘we’ are) ‘understand that there is a relationship between the stories people tell about the market … and the dynamics of the market ...”

“... move, he had rhythm.’ Johnson sang church songs, she says (‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’, ‘Mary Don’t You Weep’), along with folk songs (‘Loch Lomond’, ‘Auld Lang Syne’) and pop songs (‘Did You Ever See a Dream Walking’, ‘Pennies From Heaven’). He performed for the neighbourhood children:He played nursery rhymes, ‘Little Sally ...”

“... This, pioneered in French by Le Roi Ladurie (Montaillou, 1975), and in English by Natalie Zemon Davis (The Return of Martin Guerre, 1983) and Robert Darnton (The Great Cat Massacre, 1984), involves giving a detailed description of events in the lives of ordinary people and is almost always based on court records – A Trial of Witches is a good, The ...”

“... an uncommon smoothness, but you never get, say, the sinuosity of Marilynne Robinson or the snap of Mary McCarthy. The stories are always filled out, where an elliptical strategy might have proved useful to a writer churning over material she’s used before, as in the case of Lydia Davis. I started to think of reading ...”