Search Results

“... bohemian life – society misunderstands, ignores – faithless, feckless wife – dies young, in poverty – the Unmarked Grave. And this picture has of late been injected with new life and massively disseminated by the success of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, whose veneer of shocking realism and occasional flights of pure fancy hardly conceal its ...”

“... Jessie Conrad remembered his visit: Sir Roger Casement, a fanatical Irish protestant, came to see us, remaining some two days our guest. He was a very handsome man with a thick, dark beard and piercing, restless eyes. His personality impressed me greatly. It was about the time when he was interested in bringing to light certain atrocities which were taking place in the Belgian Congo ...”

“... a wealthy client, a 21-year-old Euro-drifter he met in Los Angeles, a flight attendant, and his young daughter Sally’s teacher. Betty suffers from chronic depression at a time when neither the diagnosis nor the pills to smother it are easy to come by. But what, here, is undermining what? What if, with or against our will, we aren’t shocked by the ...”

“... the taxon that we know today, containing all the creatures from shrews to whales that suckle their young. It was, as Linnaeus himself admitted, an artificial method of classification because the critical characters were chosen for the convenience of the classifier. Yet he believed that the characters somehow defined the essence of the plants and animals laid ...”

“... fallen crane, a traffic pile-up and, finally, a death – and the 36 years of acquaintance between Roger Sansarc, the novel’s narrator, and his cousin Alistair Dodge, which lead up to that night. Picano’s story pauses in 1954, 1961, 1969, 1974, 1979 and 1985; these pauses are meant to reveal not just significant moments in the lives of the characters ...”

“... Roger King and Neill Nugent assemble material by which they seek to persuade us that there is such a thing as the middle class, and that in the 1970s, by use of legal process, it staged a revolt. For example, entrepreneurs and high taxpayers fought under the banner of NAFF (later changed to the Freedom Association to avoid confusion with the National Front ...”

“... who died within weeks of opening the tomb of Tutankhamun in February 1923 – whose stories Roger Luckhurst reconstructs in his alluring book, which shows that the mummy’s curse is one of those traditions (like celebrating Christmas or wearing clan tartans) whose origins are supposedly lost in the mists of time but were in fact invented by the ...”

“... decision would strengthen the BPP’s ties with Pyongyang. Meanwhile Cleaver had met a gorgeous young Algerian called Malika Ziri who was constantly at his side. Attaching herself publicly to a black American at least 15 years older than her in a society where discretion was the rule would have required immense self-confidence. The Panthers were stars in ...”

“... to other men. The main story is about his championship of another Stockwell party guest, Roger Miles, whose circumstances are similar to his own – deserted by his wife, denied custody of their child. Fighting for Roger, the ‘good father’ of the title, Hooper can express his practical hostility to his own wife ...”

“... sad. Kierkegaard, misunderstood or actively disapproved of by the whole family, had only his very young nephews to write to. In the winter of 1841-2, he writes to the children of his sister Nicoline Kristine: to Michael (three times), to Carl (three times) and to Sofie (once or twice); and to the children of his sister Petrea Severine: three times to ...”

“... of Mr and Mrs Simmonds, she became the disputatious quasi-daughter of Doris Lessing; married Roger Marks; and seeing no reason why she now had to share a name with Jenny Marx, Karl Marx’s sad and stoical wife, took advantage of the fact that Rogajinsky was a name in Roger’s family and became Jenny Diski, wife of ...”

“... a food-processing plant in his empire, and thus indirectly ruins the life of Conrad Hensley. This young loser, pitched into hell, redeems himself by his exertions and Charlie Croker by his example. It must be said that there are four or five scenes that really lodge in the memory. The first one (‘Saddlebags!’) suffers from its inept set-up but is strong ...”

“... He also learned that, of all the Oxford colleges, Balliol was the tops, the cream: it housed young men who would one day ‘grow into some of the most notable figures in British intellectual and social life’. Had not this one college supplied India with three viceroys? On arrival, Ved’s only worry was that he would be unworthy of such company. Blind ...”

“... with elegant epistles’ which he had painstakingly written. The opening letter in Roger Kuin’s superb new edition of his correspondence, addressed to the 12-year-old Philip by his father, Sir Henry, urges him ‘to exercise that practise’ in letter writing, ‘for it will stand you in most steed in that profession of lyfe that you are ...”

“... Roger Fry​ , when comparing the Pre-Raphaelites with the Impressionists, described the artistic innovations of the former as an insurrection in a convent, whereas the latter were real revolutionaries. The simile may have been unconsciously prompted by an elaborate and highly finished drawing of hysterical nuns entangled with fanatical Huguenots who are disentombing the body of Queen Matilda ...”