“... his life to maim//Himself somehow for the job,’ he wrote in a posthumous address to the painter Peter Lanyon. Apart from a brief and incongruous spell as an advertising copywriter and the occasional stint on fishing boats, he refused to succumb to the distraction of a day job; he didn’t write reviews or journalism; and as his books of verse were very far ...”

“... as if he’s amazed at his own cheek in offering up a pub or boarding house for scrutiny. Henry Green, another well-spoken alcoholic who had a sympathetic interest in goings-on below stairs, was in most respects his antitype. In spite of his contempt for avant-gardism, however, Hamilton’s writerly compulsions and constraints can make his books seem like ...”

“... the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens … from which I sometimes fear we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.Socialism, England: both lie beyond the dark grey perimeter of Orwell’s present.Orwell’s ...”

“... of Ecstasy, a juvenile descendant of the Winged Victory, also closely related to Loie Fuller and Peter Pan, first perched upon the bonnet of a Rolls-Royce. By the Thirties architecture had begun to envy the sleek and aggressive forms employed in modern cars and ocean liners especially. We can see this from the spectacular perspectives hanging on the stairs ...”

“... his bleeding face, and if we are as severe as these editors, and if we want to keep that moment (Peter Brook, for example, didn’t), we have really to accept a version of the play that lacks over a hundred lines found only in the Folio. The General Introduction ably defends these editorial principles, and along the way gives a very lucid and engaging ...”

“... left Cape Town for Australia. Agatha wrote to her mother advising her to buy Shepperton Packing Co Green Label ‘Fancy’ canned peaches. Then, following a short stay in New Zealand, the Christies left Belcher and the others and took a holiday in Hawaii. Rapturous first impressions were modified when Archie was badly blistered by the sun and Agatha got severe ...”

“... beautiful cover illustration for The Wise Wound, the study of menstruation by Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove (translated into German in 1980), shows the Grail chalice within a womb. In Syberberg’s film Amfortas’s wound is both internal and external, as in dream-logic: his tunic is bloodied at groin-level, but the wound is also carried about on a ...”

“... extent of supporting ‘moderately repressive regimes’ if they happen to be allies. Accordingly, Peter Stuart reported in the Christian Science Monitor of 29 January that Congressional hearings were likely to be scheduled on the ‘terms of the hostage release agreement...treatment of the hostages...embassy security’ and – as a kind of afterthought ...”

“... Paul Foot, now its politics are rightish, its stance prurient, and its key figures Nigel Dempster, Peter McKay and Auberon Waugh. The radical lampoon has become required reading on the magazine syllabus of every Sloane Ranger. Moreover, the Eye, that fearless exposer of the faintest mafia, now runs a comfortable little establishment of its own. Consider how ...”

“... scarlet raincoat to show her naked body decorated with tomato cans on her breasts, fastened with green string, and a small birdcage containing a live canary as a necklace. Elsa died in Paris, from the gas fumes of an oven – it’s not clear whether or not she committed suicide. Years later, Barnes tried to retrieve her death mask in order to use it as an ...”

“... Was this really her own decision or was it the idea of the inept Natalie Bennett, fearful that Green supporters were being carried away by the pied piper from Islington? Corbyn himself was unmoved: he told the audience at a STW fundraising dinner that he was proud of the work the organisation had done from the time of the Afghan war onwards, and that he ...”

“... Apollinaire in the seat of honour as the ‘impresario of the avant-garde’. More recently Peter Read has explored in rich and rewarding detail the complex relationship between Apollinaire and Picasso, illustrating the way the ‘creative dialogue’ between them ‘fostered and inspired some of their finest art and poetry’. Apollinaire’s ...”

“... to a list released by the revolutionaries in 1979, included Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings and Mrs Arthur Sulzberger. Emboldened by this support, the previously timid shah manifested signs of the syndrome al-Afghani had identified in one of his predecessors: ‘However bizarre it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact, that after each visit ...”

“... was about as Spanish as a boil-in-the-bag paella. She was baptised Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert at St Peter’s Church in Liverpool on 16 February 1823, though she was probably born two years earlier in County Sligo. Her father, Edward Gilbert, was a soldier. Her mother, Elizabeth Oliver, was the product of an illegitimate union between Charles Silver Oliver, an ...”

“... crisis had never gone away; memories of the disorder of the Civil War and Interregnum were still green. Peers and Commons were united in their struggle to exclude a Catholic heir to the throne, while the travelling roadshow organised by Shaftesbury and Buckingham around the King’s bastard son, James, Duke of Monmouth, was playing to rapturous ...”