Search Results

“... over his life and over his conduct as a leader of the Revolution, and what is soon evident about David Lawday’s spirited and highly readable biography is that he stands Danton in a flattering light and pays insufficient attention to movements in the shadows. ‘The Gentle Giant of Terror’, the subtitle calls him: which suggests, along with revolutionary ...”

“... in Graceland’s sunny living room, with its stained-glass windows of peacocks and Elvis’s white grand piano in the background. During an hour-long ‘exclusive conversation’, Riley read aloud her ‘Letter to My Mama’, which she wrote for Lisa Marie’s funeral. She and Oprah put on white gloves to sift through Graceland’s archives and ...”

“... two hundred mile exclusive fishing zone in 1976, gaining control over the rich cod grounds of the Grand Banks for its Newfoundland trawlermen. Canada and Iceland took radically different approaches to stewardship. The Canadians reckoned that banishing the foreigners meant Canadian fishermen could help themselves to as much cod as they wanted. The result was ...”

“... Naples; and a decade since the first Aids fiction started to show up: Robert Ferro’s Second Son, David B. Feinberg’s Eighty-Sixed, Allen Barnett’s beautiful The Body and Its Dangers. Today, as a result of political pressure as well as recognition of a growing gay readership, gay sections can be found in most bookshop chains, and independent gay ...”

“... Tate) and Lady Catherine (1804, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland); William Turner and Sir David Brewster (inventor of the kaleidoscope) were frequent guests; on his solitary rides in the Lakes he often called on De Quincey (then editor of the Westmorland Gazette), and visited William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, whom Andrew describes in a letter ...”

“... movement, but seeming almost a normal aspect of the modern scene, like the ‘magic realism’ of David Hockney or Alex Colville. James Fenton’s ‘Dead Soldiers’, ‘A German Requiem’ and ‘Children in Exile’ are poems that work by a new and at first disconcerting technique, not to move us or to establish feeling, but to suggest a situation where ...”

“... or to the Immortal’s birthplace. As with all such counsels of wisdom and renunciation, from the Grand Inquisitor down to the various modern secret service agencies, the reasons for this enforced restraint remain mysterious: a Fromm-like ‘escape from freedom’, a preventive brake on permissiveness and the proliferation of Desire? But Grass is a ...”

“... for example, or Maureen Forrester – and then follow this by listening to a countertenor, David Daniels, for example, or Andreas Scholl, or Iestyn Davies (or go on YouTube and listen to a recording of the last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, who died in 1922, singing the Bach-Gounod ‘Ave Maria’, with what Feldman called a vibrato that is ‘often ...”

“... down into sub-Saharan Africa, as far as the northern banks of the Congo: the westerly edge of a grand imperium, already undermined by one world war and destined to crumble under the pressure of another. The passage Azéma favoured was known as the ‘Lister route’. Recoiling from the Phalangist victory, Enrique Lister, one of the Republic’s senior ...”

“... middle of the city, has a seedy charm. Built after the turn of the century, it is old-fashioned, grand with decaying French tapestries, endless public rooms, English & French prints, marble statuary, and very dirty carpets.’ The hotel’s notepaper, which Hugh had used to write to me (I have that letter), had photographs of the Crillon’s interior. I can ...”

“... Did the synth music they were making suggest pan-European themes? Or did they start with a grand Euro-vision and develop the soundtrack accordingly? To be fair, Kraftwerk have always tended to tell nil when it comes to specifics (even today, their official website is an artfully crude, tight-lipped blank), so Schütte is forced to lean on previous ...”

“... affairs secretary, and Bernard Ingham, her press officer, and a handful of personal familiars like David Wolfson and Tim Bell, it is hard to think of a single Cabinet politician, perhaps excepting the ever-supplicant Joseph, who did not eventually find themselves, after a period in the sun, banished into the half-light: the most recent victim of this expulsion ...”

“... the one person Genghiz had feared and respected.) Kitbuga may have been inspired to try playing David at Goliath’s Spring: at any rate he attacked the Sultan (who inspired his own soldiers with the cry of ‘O Islam’) without the usual Mongol craft and precaution, and lost his army and his life. Had Hulagu been able to return he would certainly have ...”

“... Lord Mayor’s banquet at the Guildhall, a reception given by the Speaker of the House of Commons, grand dinners in great houses, even a Royal Garden Party. Of course, nowadays the home church hosts – the poor, buffeted, derided C of E – would have difficulty in laying on that kind of red carpet treatment, even if they wanted to. The phrase about ...”

“... sympathetic to Wagner and sent letters of recommendation on his behalf to the Director of the Grand Opera. Wagner soon discovered how little this really meant: hundreds of such letters were written by the French cultural élite about outsiders, who rarely succeeded in penetrating the charmed circle. By way of reaction, Wagner took as his model those ...”