“... it doesn’t write up, the journalist’s participation seems, to the reader, pathetically vain. (John Mortimer has occasionally brought off the celebrity duologue, but he is the exception.) But many journalists (including, I suspect, Ms Malcolm) are reluctant to endure the denial of ego that interviewing entails. ‘What about me? Don’t you want to hear my ...”

“... allies of Bonnie Prince Charlie, a General Forster, whose surname I bear between the ‘John’ and the ‘Woodward’. That relationship comes via my father’s mother, and is, I have to admit, fairly tenuous. These words might in themselves be merely ironic: the self-made man proud of his personal achievement who stresses the obscurity of his ...”

“... one of his flâneurial rambles from Greenwich Village to the United Nations, reflections on a John Ashbery poem. Plainly he has read a lot of books. This one abounds with arresting quotations and alludes learnedly and appositely to philosophers, theologians, historians, political theorists, artists, architects, novelists and poets. Yet it is no mere ...”

“... and the friends she acquired for herself and met through her first marriage, to publisher John Rodker, she could within reason command whatever pulpit, platform or stage she needed. Once free of the security and conventions of her home and the violent claims that the countryside all around it made on her emotions, and having then sloughed off her ...”

“... time in earlier communities. Perhaps there is too great a reliance upon certain writers (such as John Aubrey and Philip Stubbes), and arguably the eccentricities of some folkloric approaches are countenanced over-generously: but Laroque would be the first to admit that the sources are fragmentary, and his coverage of a range of anthropological perspectives ...”

“... that about an old man dreaming of a young girl’s beautiful feet, or just quaint like one about John Nash as a young painter, but the slow seriousness of the writing remains attractive. There are agreeable poems about cats, one called Little Blotter, and a lively curse poem. The ordinary is often made to seem excessively strange as when blackthorn blossom ...”

“... book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), the poem shows Sexton’s craft, honed with advice from John Holmes, W.D. Snodgrass and Robert Lowell. Retrieved at the last moment from her ‘bone pile’ of discards to fill out the book, it had gone through 19 drafts before Sexton achieved what Middlebrook calls the ‘double “I” ’ of the stanza and ...”

“... in Australia’, Murray had acknowledged that all he claims for MacNamara can be claimed for John Clare in England at the same date. Of MacNamara’s ‘insouciant rhyming’, he says that it ‘can be seen as a proletarian version of Byron’s earlier manner, and it mimes the informality of a free settler’s hut rather than the fitted regularities of a ...”

“... of Feynman’s life – his relationship with Arline, with his parents, and with his mentors John Archibald Wheeler and Hans Bethe. But if Feynman was a genius, Genius fails to prove the ...”

“... important courtiers and patrons of the period, using her paternal family connections to promote John Donne, among others, and participating in literary exchanges with her clients. The cultural prestige of these ladies in turn inspired Aemelia Lanyer, a commoner, to seek their patronage for her own poetry, which celebrated women’s virtues. Another ...”

“... adventures within it seem both realistic and safe. No possible turn of a Ransome story would allow John, Roger, Susan and Titty to be embarrassed by their mother’s breasts showing through a tight sweat shirt. Many heroes are a cut above Adrian in talent. K.M. Peyton’s Pennington is a rough diamond and gets into trouble with the police, but he is also a ...”

“... for the average, out-of-shape voyeur. Of course, Hastings does have some professional artists – John Bratby, for instance. When he exhibited locally, some arse-licker left his address and wrote, ‘Wonderful, just like Vincent,’ in the Visitors’ Book. I couldn’t resist adding ‘Price’ in the same writing. In the evenings, there are the pubs – the ...”

“... the casualty of the Falklands War, although if blame is to be allocated, I would place it on Sir John Nott, the Secretary of State for Defence, whose policy of running down the Royal Navy (with Mrs Thatcher’s support) gave the Junta the signal it sought to embark on a bit of smash and grab. I was on the platform at the sensational meeting of the ...”

“... from science. The 18th century, the author would have us believe, conveniently turning his back on John Ray and that brilliant company of contemporaries in the later decades of the previous century, was the first age in which nature came under close scientific observation. That Professor Charlton is unsure of his footing on such ground is revealed by the ...”

“... in writing a novel about Parliament relates to the characters’ credibility. Trouble begins, as John Lehmann once pointed out, when the author feels obliged to introduce a high-ranking minister. The real-life holders of office are too vividly before our eyes. Camp surmounts this problem by avoiding it. He opts instead for a recent past in industrial ...”