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“... is composed of soft words of the sort which Dante, in a delightful passage of De vulgari eloquentia, called ‘womanly’ and ‘nicely combed’ (‘pexa’); rhythmically, the little lines combine to form a classically harmonious seven-syllable verse, a settenario, such as might have been written by Tasso or Leopardi. The ...”

“... at every length from newspaper reviews to extended essays. Her introduction to a new edition of Walter de la Mare’s Memoirs of a Midget is a subtle exploration of the idea of the novel in which one of her many surprising enthusiasms, in this case for a writer who was neither fashionable nor obviously close to her ...”

“... a literature aimed at children. The Friar and the Boy, a fabliau of eight folios printed by Winkyn de Worde in the 1510s, tells the story of a farmer’s son and his travails against an evil stepmother; he acquires a magic charm that makes her fart loudly whenever she gets angry with him. Medieval romances were still popular in the 16th century, and were sold ...”

“... for in this context they know, like older readers on the poetry scene, what is proper to it. But Walter de la Mare’s line ‘Who said, “Peacock Pie”?’ is not just appropriate to a poem for children. It is a real question, just as this, from Stevie Smith, is real information: Cool and plain Cool and plain Was ...”

“... his Scottish visitor told him in no uncertain terms that this was because the Norman Michel de Aliot, right-hand man of William the Conqueror, had obtained ‘a number of manors in Northamptonshire, and from there the El(l)iots spread into Devonshire and Galloway.’ He went on to ask, ‘Do you mind the Elliot marching song?’ to which ...”

“... who supports it thoroughly, I think, is Paracelsus, a roving magic doctor who did not publish the De Nymphis during his lifetime. But it was printed at Basle while Marlowe and Shakespeare were boys, first in German as the author had demanded, and two years later in Latin; and, though he had defied the doctors’ organisations, his writing had continued to be ...”

“... and mortification at the many opportunities she had missed. As a child she had met Masefield and Walter de la Mare; nothing much she could have said to them, but she had met T.S. Eliot, too, and there was Priestley and Philip Larkin and even Ted Hughes, to whom she’d taken a bit of a shine but who remained ...”