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“... alone in forecasting the unravelling of everything. Hardy wrote in 1914 of his feeling ‘that we are living in a more brutal age than that, say, of Elizabeth’, which ‘does not inspire one to write hopeful poetry, or even conjectural prose, but simply make[s] one sit still in an apathy, and watch the clock spinning backwards’. For Henry James, the ...”

“... have guaranteed defeat or exile for any government or monarch foolish enough to try it on. If we are to believe one of the contributions in this volume, ‘Americans are characteristically more concerned about details of usage the English either accept or ignore as a matter of course.’ (This is explained as due to the fact that in the United States no ...”

“... captured by the grainy news films of the era. Greyness, wetness, smokiness, run-down-ness are what we see. Britain was a highly regulated society in which people constantly ran up against petty officialdom, and that in combination with austerity served to give ‘socialism’ a bad name. According to Kynaston, Ronald Reagan spent four months in Britain in the ...”

“... appears to have included simply for its strangeness, is suddenly to make us aware of how immersed we have become in the enclosed universe of the great man’s life. Biographies often give the impression that the world revolves around their subject. A biography of Benjamin Britten will be especially prone to this distortion, because Britten himself thought the ...”

“... in scientific materialism abandon scientific evidence altogether: with equal justification, we may await the removal of the inhibitions which cause colour-blindness. I have discussed this very subject with both composers, for many hours – but unfortunately, my teaching experience was not sufficiently comprehensive at that stage in my life to provide ...”

“... conceit, which has not disappeared even now, though few perhaps would go quite as far as W.T. Stead, who wrote of his position as Editor of the Northern Echo: ‘It is the position of a Viceroy ... God calls ... and now points ... to the only true throne in England, the Editor’s chair, and offers me the real sceptre.’ It is interesting to find ...”

“... active, processes than reflex arcs. This book describes Pavlov’s background, though we learn little of his personal life, beyond his relations with the newly-formed Communist government, which accorded favourable treatment to his laboratory despite the fact that his philosophy was a shade too mechanistic for the Bolshevik orthodoxy. Pavlov and ...”

“... of accountancy constituting the present. All the successors, the amiable if cack-handed Victor Matthews, his feverish mayor of the palace, Jocelyn Stevens, and subsequent persons deepening the descent, still aspired to Beaverbrook’s peremptory ways, his habit of punting enthusiasms and nominating heroes. All that was missing was the flair. One can’t ...”

“... Fair (it appears, with a short biography, in the recently reissued In ‘Vanity Fair’, by Roy Matthews and Peter Mellini).* When she was 20 she was painted by G.F. Watts, who was besotted with her and called her his Bambina. At the height of her notoriety she was caricatured in Punch and elsewhere. In her last days she had a deathbed photograph taken of ...”

“... carries a faintly sleazy air: poets, comedians, psychiatrists and the like. It is only when we pass the age of 70 that the entrants begin to look as if they’ve earned their keep. For one thing, they’ve been in the war. Even if they didn’t fight, they performed wonders of crypto-analysis at Bletchley or they blue-printed some devastating ...”

“... themselves accept no confinements. ‘Old Boys, Old Girls’ concerns the hopeless life of Caesar Matthews, who is convicted of murder and sent to a tough prison in Lorton, Virginia, just outside DC. There, he is taught to bully and dominate; Jones’s depiction of prison life is full of calmly vicious detail, and his narrative voice mimics Caesar’s ...”

“... voice, grotesque and solemn at the same time’. When Ceausescu of the Swiss bank accounts sings, we feel sick. When Thylle, ten long years in the Lager, sings, we weep. It is a reminder that the Communist tradition has left its imprint deep in the souls of many different people from many different countries, and that those ...”

“... but cricket is ingrained in him from his birth and upbringing not many miles from the places where W.G. Grace performed his miracles. But the book is not just a tribute from Frank Keating. From almost every county ground, professional cricketers and umpires, old-timers and young-timers, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians are quoted ...”

“... with precision and there are many actions of a sexual nature which fall outside that definition. We will never know what happened, nor will any but the prurient particularly want to know. Dr Matthew prints Gladstone’s letters to Mrs Thistlethwaite in an appendix. All one can say about the relationship is that she provided him with something of the same ...”

“... of the nation address, he was grabbed by the scruff of his jacket by SABC’s head of news, Jimi Matthews, told not to get Matthews ‘into shit’ and ordered to put together soundbites of opposition politicians’ positive reactions to Zuma’s speech. He refused (even had he wished to, he could hardly have complied as ...”