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“... distraction, Augustine recommends that he make notes in the margin.Petrarch wrote many notes and drew the odd picture. More important, he transformed reading into something new, a literary enterprise organically connected to his career as poet, philosopher and historian. Like Robert Graves, he admitted that he preferred certain books – the Latin classics ...”

“... suppose miss even now’. His mother’s life was gravely wounded by her husband’s death, and it drew the two survivors together in a bond which is movingly evoked. She is characterised in terms of her proximity to the author, while becoming, on such terms, a leading presence in the book: boastfully pleased with her bright, impressionable, exhibitionist ...”

“... Chaeronea, a town in Boeotia in central Greece, was the site of a showdown in 338 bc between Philip II of Macedon and a coalition led by Athens and Thebes, Boeotia’s biggest city. Philip won the day. Three years later, Thebes was sacked by Philip’s son Alexander, and under Roman ...”

“... and church. Not Queen Elizabeth, who would surely have giggled if anyone had suggested it; not Philip II, who would have been shocked; not even, perhaps, the Emperor Rudolph II, who sat in his high palace in Prague communing with the stars and tried to get John Dee to put him in touch with the heavenly orders. True, there had been Pope Paul III, a ...”

“... joint practice. The creation of James Stirling, world-class architect, the man who as much as Philip Johnson or Arata Isosaki invented the ‘signature building’ and who travelled the rewarding circuit of international big money prizes, lectures and juries from the 1960s onwards, is a very contemporary tale of celebrity and image, fame and ...”

“... arty B-movies, or B art-movies, at the same time that Lethem was writing Amnesia Moon, a homage to Philip K. Dick, and Gun, with Occasional Music, a homage to Chandler and Hammett; graffiti and other outsider art started appearing in museums and auction houses; and DJ-worship replaced the mid-century cult of the conductor. It’s possible, in other words, to ...”

“... again.’ Sandbrook’s touch is sure on those cultural areas which are clearly to his taste (from Philip Larkin via James Bond to Dad’s Army); his own affections lead him to spot nostalgia in places you wouldn’t immediately expect to find it. However, his tastes and affections contribute to a thesis which is in itself suspect, and whose generalities are ...”

“... Hundred Years War was never just a confrontation between the kingdoms of England and France. It drew into its orbit the great quarrel between England and Scotland that Edward I’s northern ambitions had generated, the civil wars of succession in the Duchy of Brittany (1341-64) and the Kingdom of Castile (1365-89), the long-running disputes between the ...”

“... joys and sorrows go straight back to the early Romantics. He is not a bit like Hardy and Philip Larkin, who are often associated with him. No comparison could be more misleading. Their idiom is one of deprivation, of that pleasure in things going wrong, or never having been right, which has become so much a part of English culture and ...”

“... opportunity was offered me – to do some research work for a soc[iology] instructor named Philip Rieff, who is working on, among other things, a reader in the sociology of politics + religion. At last the chance to really involve myself in one area with competent guidance. 12/2/49 Last night, or was it early this (Sat.) morning? – I am engaged to ...”

“... Lady Diana Cooper is capable of saying anything, if she thinks you are dumb enough to swallow it. Philip Ziegler has reason to consider himself astute, but he perhaps ruled out too soon the possibility that the queen of the put-on had spotted the ideal patsy. The chief lacuna in an otherwise interesting book is its failure adequately to convey the heroine’s ...”

“... quest for proof on the ‘official record’ informs their attempts to smoke out commies. Baldwin drew the bureau’s attention because he was in the habit of telling the press that he was working on a book about the FBI and the South that would drop ‘like an atomic bomb’. Baldwin never wrote the book. He also told interviewers that getting Hoover out of ...”

“... and even in conclusion – Mia Rodrigues-Salgado, for example, feels that the enterprise increased Philip II’s reputation, particularly in the north – but they all of course agree in trying to place the disastrous voyage in its context. Yet it is exceedingly difficult to know just where the borders of the context lie, and indeed where any historical ...”

“... And the plays brought in a lot of money. ‘I had achieved what I wanted . . . Bernard Partridge drew a cartoon for Punch in which William Shakespeare was shown biting his fingers in front of the boards that advertised my plays.’ As a wit-about-town, Maugham had various dalliances with women. His lust for chaps was a fairly open secret in his circle – he ...”

“... later that evening. He cynically and cheerfully admitted later that he had ‘skedaddled and never drew rein’ at the first hint of fisticuffs. He quoted with appreciation R.B. Cunninghame Graham, who said that Shaw was ‘the first man to run away from Trafalgar Square on Bloody Sunday’. (Cunninghame Graham went to prison as a result of the riot.) This is ...”