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“... animist tenderness in Hughes’s writing, a tenderness that plays against his celebration of feral power. It’s like the last line of a short early poem ‘Snowdrop’ – ‘Her pale head heavy as metal’ – where nature and human artifice come gently together.Inevitably, though, it is biographical interest that these letters stimulate. We catch Hughes’s ...”

“... those suspected of recusancy to swear loyalty to the sovereign, and to disavow papal claims to power as ‘impious and heretical’: ‘And I do further swear, that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, this damnable doctrine and position, that princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the pope, may be deposed or ...”

“... that they overlook its obvious concomitants in keeping down the standard of wages and purchasing power, and the spread of desolation over their own countryside. Their eyes only seem to be fixed on overseas trade.There are those who argue that it was this depression – and the sense of betrayal it engendered in farmers between the wars – that led the ...”

“... are properly a function of medical ethics rather than law, it is the law which holds the ultimate power to determine where the territory of medical ethics ends and the realm of the insured risk begins. The difference in levels at which medical negligence can occur, as the book’s opening chapter explains, is of key relevance. Once an individual is qualified ...”

“... its reliance on the slightly shallow brilliance of simile as opposed to the deeper, more reflexive power of metaphor. You’re meant to be thrilled by it, but not to linger too long, for it’s leading you into a story, not trying to stop you in your tracks. In that respect, it is very like a lot of the best lines in current verse – lines that dazzle briefly ...”

“... Rediger settles on a nearby literary analogy. As he reminds François, they are in the house where Anne Desclos, Jean Paulhan’s lover, wrote The Story of O. For all its ‘ostentatious kitsch’, Rediger says, The Story of O captured ‘the astonishing and simple idea… that the summit of human happiness resides in the most absolute submission’. His ...”

“... came again, now changed with time, Which shocked me, but still beautiful. ‘You have usurped my power and name – Your work misjudged, these people pitiful.’ I shrugged. ‘So usurp it back again.’ Although a Dubliner, Quinn works in Prague, and the sequence from which ‘Ur-Aisling’ comes – ‘Days of the New Republic’ – refers as much to the ...”

“... all of it filtered through David’s anaesthetised gaze and precocious schoolboy prose. The power of The Neon Bible resides in its descriptions of the small town where David’s childhood is unspent. But, as the reader admires Toole’s writing, questions form. Was he really only 16 when he wrote it? Did he perhaps revise or wholly rewrite the text at a ...”

“... it, and tonight, returning from the opera, we are mortified to find we are too late for supper. Anne Vaughan, our organiser, braves the kitchen and eventually a waitress takes pity on us and gives us some bread and ham and a bit of dog-eared salad which we take upstairs in plastic bags. ‘You must be very hungry,’ says a man in the lift. ‘What country ...”

“... a minor degree of physical effort, three, four, five days or longer elapse before full muscle power is restored’, and stated that this phenomenon ‘is virtually a sheet-anchor in the diagnosis of ME and without it a diagnosis should not be made’. Many consultants who see ME patients advise them to use the pain as a guide to gauge exactly what they ...”

“... the scandals are those of vulgar corruption, with members of the Administration using their power and position to line their pockets and to block the actions of justice. In England there are usually sexual undertones to our scandals, even where treason is involved. In France, where politics and social connections are always a factor, nothing is ever ...”

“... Dent, but now he felt he must flatter Harold Hobson – ‘from his fear that Hobson had it in his power to ruin him and that his friendship must be secured at all costs,’ says James Harding. ‘He need not have worried, for Hobson was, and is, a Christian and a man of honour.’ Almost superstitiously, Agate entreated the Sunday Times to appoint Hobson as ...”

“... as forums in which cross-fertilisation takes place, Maddox was given pause by a statistic from Anne Ockerson of the Association of Research Libraries in Washington who noted that of the 1.5 million items her member-libraries supplied to each other last year, an estimated two thirds consisted of single copies of articles. In science the unit of information ...”

“... also have worked for Escoffier, but all that is certain is that he moved to England with his wife, Anne, in 1886. From London restaurants he went into the household of the 7th duke of Newcastle and then undertook a succession of ventures, including keeping a boarding house. Some suggestions that his marriage was unhappy and his wife mentally unstable are all ...”

“... queen, the next he’s charvering his way through London’s upper-class totty, including Princess Anne: when did this vigorous brigadier find time to get his soldiering done? Meanwhile, in front of him at a dinner, his wife is groin-grinding with the heir to the throne – which shocks Lord Soames’s staff in Southern Rhodesia (or, as officials called ...”