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“... cover depicting Marilyn Monroe mussing his hair had cost him his.)Roth’s first choice was Ross Miller, a friend, professor at the University of Connecticut and nephew of the playwright Arthur Miller. Unfortunately, the neph was no chip off the old oak. Hapless is perhaps the kindest word. A workhorse like Roth could only look on aghast at the ...”

“... novels were selling strongly and being urgently discussed: one was lyrical and would-be Proustian (Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance); the other was bilious and aspired to satire (Larry Kramer’s Faggots). I disliked them both, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that gay literary culture had room for two such opposite productions, could ...”

“... ambitious woman without an enlightened father might adopt what the historian Sarah Gwyneth Ross calls a ‘filial persona’ to secure support without scandal – and it required all the genuflection one might expect. ‘I commit myself to your boundless dignity, wisdom and authority,’ Isotta Nogarola wrote to the celebrated humanist pedagogue ...”

“... order, seemingly, to save his own skin, though the scene in which his wife is discussing this with Ross is unbearably tense, the audience knowing she is about to be murdered. The ending is as abrupt as the beginning, with not much in the way of a dying fall from Malcolm, who’s straightaway off to Scone for his coronation. Most relevant bit:Alas, poor ...”

“... Obama had arranged for a portrait of Harriet Tubman, the former slave and abolitionist, to replace Andrew Jackson, the slave owner known as the Indian Killer, on the $20 bill. Steve Mnuchin, the secretary of the treasury, states that this will not be possible until at least 2028 and probably not at all. Trump has a portrait of Jackson hanging in the Oval ...”

“... some new shame and accepting it has shortened. It used to take me days to work through the Kübler-Ross model over each small death of truth and honour in the public square, but I’ve got it down to half an hour now. When we bumped into Dominic by the lake I apologised for losing my temper. I told him I was thinking of writing an article about people who ...”