“... laughter lived on, of course, in his friends’ memories as well as in his books. Leader reports Christopher Hitchens, at Amis’s memorial service in 1996, recalling an occasion when Amis performed several of his most celebrated ‘imitations’: ‘He made all his noises, and by all I don’t just mean the Metropolitan Line train approaching the station at ...”

“... Dryden: A Literary Life (1991) asserts that Dryden could most certainly have realised his early hope to ‘make the world some part of amends for many ill plays by an heroic poem’. Hammond goes on: The writing of an heroic poem was thwarted, however, not by any lack of abilities on Dryden’s part, but by his failure to find patronage. What might easily ...”

“... had formed the Royal Naval Division, secured Brooke a place in it and sent it east, in the hope of helping Russia by taking Constantinople and opening up the Black Sea. In the weeks after Brooke’s death landings were finally made on the Gallipoli peninsula and many of his battalion were gunned down by Turks positioned on the high ground; 11 of its 15 ...”

“... Because We Put Chicken in Pasta. Everyone agreed that it was fine to make fun of Italians. Was Christopher Columbus the reason?A conversation with a future grandchild. She lifts her eyes, as blue as willow ware. The tips of her braids twitch with innocence. ‘So you were all calling each other bitch, and that was funny, and then you were all calling each ...”

“... Britain returned most of its gains to the Netherlands in exchange for keeping the Cape of Good Hope and some minor territories in Latin America. In 1817, his glory days seemingly over, Raffles became the lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen, a miserable penal colony and pepper trading post on the west coast of Sumatra. Back in London, he had moved in the ...”

“... calm of mind all passion spent’ – l is dominant, and this allows, subliminally, for a hope that in the future a voice might again say ‘Let there be light.’ Also in the last line of Paradise Lost – ‘Through Eden took their solitary way’ – the consonant Milton prized above all others, the l in the centre of his name, stands out. The ...”

“... had more or less impermeable walls and its contents were more or less homogeneous. Christopher Hann, discussing what he called the ‘Malinowski period’ of early field anthropology, in Social Anthropology (one of the volumes in the Teach Yourself series), underlined the emphasis laid by Malinowski and his disciples and students on the ...”

“... he composed in ‘a naive fashion’, Messiaen replied: ‘Please don’t take it as an insult. I hope I am also naive and will remain so as long as I live.’)Messiaen’s​ impact on the European avant-garde of the postwar years was so profound that Grisey called him ‘God the Father’. Yet he left behind no ‘school’ of composition and was nearly as ...”

“... letters would enshrine his reputation; an edition of those was released in 2008, edited by Christopher Reid. I am not sure this enshrinement has come to pass. His reputation still rests on the phrase ‘sudden sharp hot stink of fox’, and Birthday Letters, read at a distance of 27 years, contains too much careful positioning to really count as ...”

“... credibly, and often fall prey to wishful thinking; truly persuasive large-scale accounts are rare (Christopher Chitty’s Sexual Hegemony, posthumously published in 2020, is a bold but sketchy attempt). Queer studies, in particular, can be pulled between the desire to accord marginal sexualities proper recognition and attention, and the political intuition ...”

“... as ‘So long as there are people in the world who have no power whatsoever, I cannot lose all hope,’ and ‘I have never heard of a person attacking power without wanting it.’ Portraits of the powerful in history rekindle his hatred of power, ‘and warn me of my own power over people.’ Everything Canetti writes is obsessed with and transformed by ...”

“... to the Conference were besieging Abacha even before he finished stating the terms – in the hope of a juicy government contract that would make them millionaires. This is to say nothing of those – like Kingibe, the Chief’s running mate – who didn’t need to be asked twice before agreeing to join the Conference, thus enabling Abacha to maintain ...”

“... This is surely the plain biographical truth, well stated. But if both the emergency and the hope that brought him into the Communist movement were more intense than was typical of his English contemporaries, it is less clear that the chronological contrast would have been more significant than the geographical, as he goes on to suggest. Was the October ...”

“... of Kelley’s release, and none of them mentions anything about an escape or injury. In July 1593, Christopher Parkins reports from Prague that Kelley has been promised ‘his enlargement presently’, but still ‘remains in hold’ at Krivoklat. According to Dee’s diary he was released on 4 October, but the best source puts the date a couple of days ...”

“... Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard – who were sworn opponents of Maastricht, none with any hope of winning an election. In government, Blair’s initial doubts about the single currency, prompted by the hostility to the euro of the Murdoch press that had helped elect him, soon faded. But Gordon Brown’s firm refusal to abandon sterling, made from his ...”