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“... specific demands that a real religion might make. The only thing you have to do as a follower is read more Gibran, plus, of course, ‘see’ more deeply, ‘listen to the language of the heart’ and so on. Bushrui and Jenkins stress Sufi influence on Gibran and there may have been some. Nevertheless, every element in his thought can alternatively be traced ...”

“... is about as flawed in execution as it is possible to get without the pages flying apart as you read. Mothers of the Novel has a perfectly defensible, indeed defence-worthy, thesis. A very good case could be made in favour of Spender’s assertion: ‘If the laws of literary criticism were to be made explicit they would require as their first entry that the ...”

“... romances, and David Swale (all too briefly) discusses the limitations of D.H. Lawrence when read in the light of the German Bildungsroman, with its freedom and spiritual adventurousness which is at the same time related to the sense of a given community: these, however, are minor adjustments to accepted literary history. In Part II, ‘Translation in ...”

“... when made by a novelist who had no sense of humour. C.P. Snow’s Corridors of Power is a chore to read now, at least as far as the young are concerned. They don’t care very much that it struck a chord among a mandarin élite which was rapidly becoming disillusioned. Nevertheless, in the course of that novel Snow has Lewis Eliot observe ...”

“... to class interest, or, more important, racial supremacy. If the thing is a genuine mystery, if, as Richard Lewontin has written, ‘we know nothing more about genetic causes of difference in social status and power today than was known to Galton,’ then the history of biological engineering, and genetics, is merely an aspect of the history of class or race or ...”

“... of sensibility, and she has a ruthless way with live plaice and lobsters. More oddly, she can read with entire approval a report (in January 1941) that Hitler has painlessly gassed some thousands of lunatics: an act of clemency which, to her surprise, her husband enthusiastically endorses. Little in the way of hard incident occurs. One day Nella Last ...”

“... John Bolton, the role of empire-minder has been taken over by Democrats and the anti-Trump media. (Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, accordingly averred that any withdrawal from Syria is as unthinkable as withdrawal from Germany or Japan would be. Having those permanent garrisons abroad ‘keeps countries from doing things you ...”

“... continent of Australia? Yet in the lists of Britain’s manufacturing exports you never read of Wednesfield’s specialised output, any more than you read of exports of leg-irons and thumbscrews (‘Hiatts of Birmingham are of course famous for their manufacture of handcuffs,’ we’re told). For every creature ...”

“... hot-mouthing, hair-lifting, sexy, sexy fear that he only ever met at times like this’. Must I read this? ‘You must know everything,’ said the master storyteller Isaac Babel a few years before he disappeared into a Stalinist labour camp. A taboo on such material, whether self or socially imposed, would inflict its own kind of moral injury. For a start ...”

“... that is asked of the viewer, whether novice or expert, is a) to give the show enough time; b) to read both the works and the labels; c) to inspect the cases carefully – conceptual art wasn’t made just to hang on the wall; and d) to remember that though conceptualists revelled in lists, schemes, systems and graphs, a work’s format was never an end in ...”

“... a third of the way into The Child that Books Built, tells the following story: I learnt to read around my sixth birthday. I was making a dinosaur in school from crepe bandage and toilet rolls when I started to feel as if an invisible pump was inflating my head from the inside. My face became a cluster of bumps on a taut sphere, my feet receded and ...”

“... Baudelaire and Epictetus, seem thoroughly, unostentatiously appropriate. The man is widely read and witty on an impressive variety of topics. He is wise, charming, at ease with himself and with the world. Why shouldn’t he be? Shoe-horned into Grobel’s slightly breathless introduction and postscript, comments by friends and employees give glimpses ...”

“... comes to find it difficult to write about Charles without moderation. Instead of thinking, like Dr Richard Cust, that revision has tended to throw out the baby with the bathwater, he thinks that there are large quantities of Whig bathwater still to be drained. Many of Dr Sharpe’s arguments will be engaged by historians for some time to come. He does not ...”

“... Moral and Otherwise, was a brilliant discovery on Alison Lurie’s part, and makes one want to read the others – couldn’t they be reprinted? – as well as books in other genres by Lucy Lane Clifford, though one suspects they might not be so good. Hers are not the only rare and outstanding stories that Lurie has dug up: there are indeed many ...”

“... hinted at in the text, has recently been trumpeted by the journalists Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh in The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, which is largely a popularisation of Robert Eisenman’s theories. Unsurprisingly, Baigent and Leigh contribute an effusive blurb to this book. Eisenman for his part has been putting himself forward as the ...”