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“... as the debating triumph it would have achieved would have come at too high a political price. John Major’s government survived its Commons ordeal on Scott because of the decision to abstain by the three members of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. One of the three, the Reverend William McCrea, was reported as having asked, shortly before the ...”

“... came across: much of Hunky Dory consists of pastiches of Bowie’s musical heroes of the 1960s – John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Anthony Newley, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground. Which would make Ziggy Stardust the beautiful butterfly that emerged from the chrysalis. Paul Trynka begins his biography with a description of Bowie’s performance of ‘Starman’ on ...”

“... a chance to look at the occasional paintings, including a couple of nice early 19th-century old masters (of the Butchers’ Company, that is), besides various ceremonial cleavers including the one used to cut up the first New Zealand lamb brought to England and served to Queen Victoria in 1880. Nicest though are two Victorian or Edwardian toy ...”

“... the ostentatious solemnity one finds in the liturgical minimalism of composers like Arvo Pärt and John Tavener. The Messiaen ‘cathedral’, if not exactly ecumenical, is vast, with plenty of room in the nave – as Edward Said noted – for ‘staunch secularists like myself’. The sixth movement of Vingt Regards, a turbulent fugue, is called ‘Par Lui ...”

“... and teachers. Not since the publication of the central texts of the modern history of slavery, John Hope Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom in 1947 and Kenneth Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution in 1956, has any serious history book claimed that slavery was a benign paternalistic institution. No one has argued that it was anything other than the great ...”

“... form, Lane and Dryfeld are ghostly presences who slip the net of social identity. They are also masters of appearance, always turning up ahead of the horde in the frantic search for finds. Recognising no ‘intrinsic values’ beyond customer demand, the book market is a ‘world metaphor’. A Poundian echo declares Lane symbolic of his ...”

“... their laboratories crowded with foreigners (especially Americans) come to sit at the feet of the masters (the supremacy of German chemistry brought it about that in most universities German was a required subject for students of chemistry). Alex studied under Walther Borsche at the University of Frankfurt am Main. To make this possible, the value of his ...”

“... dark grey suits (no pinstripes), blue plastic helmets, heavy-duty wellies and – apart from John Prescott – full zip millennial grins. Showcased by a long-focus lens that tactfully blurs the background of industrial dereliction. Britain is Working. Handson management. Optimism. Good humour. That stuff. A cross between a hobbled moon walk and Neil ...”

“... has lasted ever since. But in his warm evocation of this boyhood, the kind you might imagine a John Buchan hero to have had, there is also (and not for the last time) a utilitarian chill. Aged 13, he allows himself to be seduced by the household’s part-time maid, aged 16, whom he finds in his bedroom in an inviting posture. Never one to waste an ...”

“... with the publication in 2003 of its magisterial sixth volume, written by the general editor, John Baker, and covering the years 1483-1558. It then went back to the beginning, with R.H. Helmholz’s opening volume on early canon law. The rest was silence, until in 2010 the series sailed suddenly and magnificently into port without any of the remaining ...”

“... however, suggests that Alice must have been quite aware of William’s feeling for Minny. In 1913, John Gray, then dean of Harvard Law School and another of the men who had once been in love with Minny, gave his share of her correspondence to Alice for safekeeping; and it was Alice who in turn sent the letters on to Henry for the second volume of his ...”

“... architects is essentially a list (Meades likes lists) of refined barbarians. The pantheon contains John Vanbrugh, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, S.S. Teulon, William Butterfield, Frederick Pilkington, Dominikus and Gottfried Böhm, Claude Parent, Rodney Gordon, Richard Rogers (in his Gothic moods), Zaha Hadid. Sometimes, as with the Communist emulator of the style of ...”

“... hit on a ruse to dissuade asylum seekers from luxuriating in what ministers (echoing their tabloid masters) saw as the great hospitality and openness of Britain. Section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, passed that year, punished ‘late’ asylum seekers by denying them financial support while also ensuring that they would not be permitted ...”

“... community needed to be ‘100 per cent happy’ with the content, but in the same message to John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, he made clear that ‘the judgment as to whether a single person should be appointed to write the final version’ had yet to be made.20 On his best behaviour, Scarlett made a final seizure of control ...”

“... which a character based on Banks appears; two excellent accounts from the 1990s by the historian John Gascoigne situated Banks in the context of the English Enlightenment and the empire; Neil Chambers in 2007 contextualised Banks in the history of collecting; Patricia Fara has a rollicking go at Banks as an exploitative imperialist in Sex, Botany and Empire ...”