“... or directs itself to celebrating their actuality and (more especially) their value. Even at best, it seems able to accord their importance only notional rather than real assent. This applies even to the recent movement in American ‘literary studies’ which takes deconstruction as the very theme and method of criticism precisely because it mistrusts ...”

“... of The Habit of Art. It’s a sharp and energetic performance, matinée audiences often the best and today’s helped because there are thought to be at least 130 blind people in the audience. Some of them have been up on the stage beforehand to familiarise themselves with the layout, handle the props and meet the cast, all of which helps to focus ...”

“... reluctance to go into unpleasant things, her desire to tell the truth and still acquit herself as best she can for her part in what she knows to be a frightful tale – all this the author renders with sympathetic accuracy. Malick has compared Holly to Nancy Drew or Tom Sawyer as an ‘innocent abroad’. Badlands was loosely based on the case of Charles ...”

“... their way. There was an election coming within 18 months and if she lost it they might spend the best years of their political lives in opposition. Meanwhile, if Heseltine won, many of them would be out in the cold anyway. ‘The elders of the tribe, and most of its leading younger members too, wanted a quiet life and their own collective advancement. They ...”

“... doyen of them, William Cornish, has a distinguished record both as a legal historian – his and Geoffrey Clark’s Law and Society in England 1750-1950 remains an important work – and as an authority on intellectual property, on which he contributes an excellent section linking controversy and change in the law to economic interest and scientific ...”

“... both at Cliveden and in St James’s Square – had evolved. Now, the Astors frequently invited Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the Times, Nevile Henderson, ambassador to Germany, and Philip Kerr, the Marquess of Lothian, a Christian Scientist like Nancy, and one of several to express the view that in marching into the Rhineland, Germany was merely walking into ...”

“... of British Communism, a volume of essays combining research and recollections. Today Samuel is best known for his work on popular memory and for History Workshop. John Merrick’s new selection of his essays aims to rectify that: it brings together a sample of Samuel’s historical studies, several of which are still thrilling to read, and most of which ...”

“... Devon. There Rupert, Virginia and Ka were joined by James Strachey, Maynard Keynes (whose brother Geoffrey was a close friend of Brooke), three of the Olivier sisters and a party of old Bedalians. Lytton Strachey lurked nearby. They slept under canvas, close to the earth, rose early to watch the sunrise, put on theatrical shows and ate summer pudding, while ...”

“... of Commons bars selling drink outside the hours which Parliament had laid down for everyone else. Geoffrey Lock acerbically analyses the decision (and its author) in his chapter on the law governing Parliament in the Oliver and Drewry volume. Part of the reason for the decision, and not a wholly discreditable one, is that in the absence of a constitutional ...”

“... in the book has a through-line, it is the battle of his ‘I’ with his ‘want’. Father Geoffrey Heald, the priest who introduced Olivier to acting at the choir school of All Saints Margaret Street, and played Petruchio to his 13-year-old Katharina in The Shrew, told him to read Dickens – as an actor, he would never want for characterisations. The ...”

“... who had by then published several major biographies (Flaubert, Maupassant, Apollinaire), but was best known as a translator of Flaubert – had met Greene years before in America, when he was still with his first wife. Hazzard would go on to write a clutch of spiky, ambitious novels including The Bay of Noon (1970), The Transit of Venus (1980) and The Great ...”

“... career, and he often succeeded. His closest colleagues from his time at the Treasury, including Geoffrey Robinson, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, remained remarkably loyal. But there was​ , inevitably, a downside. The higher he rose, the more political these friendships became. Being part of Gordon’s band was not a costless enterprise – it deeply alienated ...”

“... perfect tool for an authoritarian communist government; in 2025 he said that AI was humanity’s best chance to escape technological stagnation. And yet a careful parsing of his long, rambling interviews suggests greater consistency – a man whose greatest concern about AI was never that it was dangerous, but that it wasn’t going to work.One resolution of ...”

“... Bierce, The Devil’s DictionaryStalemate beneath the dense sky of moratorium agreements: the best we can hope for Europe ... But there is no escape route in sight. You feel you are standing at bay. Australia is not a way out.Christa Wolf, CassandraThe city of Sydney has one decent road to the airport because of the Queen’s visit in 1963; the royal ...”

“... piss it off – was the windfall tax on profits imposed in 1981 by Mrs Thatcher’s chancellor Geoffrey Howe. (Blair or Brown would never dream of doing anything like that to the City.) But the abolition of exchange controls in 1979 and the increasingly international flow of capital, combined with the abolition of restrictions on trading practices which ...”