“... are admirable and even beautiful. But they function as a biological equivalent to Burger King or Microsoft; they threaten to become transnational monopolies that force out the local versions. Indeed, you can see the one as a by-product of the other: the industrialised world that creates garbage, cities and shipping (which often transmits the weedy ...”

“... and, if Trump got elected, there would be a third volume provisionally titled ‘The Return of the King’.) ‘I think he’s the greatest poet of our generation,’ the man said.‘Why?’ I asked.‘I think he has done more to call attention to the use of the English language than anybody else in our time and he has been more creative with the ...”

“... the atrocity in Charleston explicitly; no one had to. We were in the church where Martin Luther King declared his opposition to the Vietnam War in 1967. We were honouring the life of America’s leading free jazz musician in a dramatic week for freedom in America. The Supreme Court had ruled five to four in favour of gay marriage; at the Emanuel African ...”

“... and textually. His model of the poet is not classical, but Biblical: not Orpheus, but Solomon and David, the two chief authors of what Sidney described (conventionally) as ‘the poetical part of the Scripture’. Those Biblical models were the foundation of what has been called a ‘Protestant poetics’, which shaped English poetry from Sidney and Spenser ...”

“... on plates at the door? The señor and señora are preparing them to starve.’ The title story in David Leavitt’s Family Dancing begins with a graduation party, flower arrangement and girls in starched tunics, handing trays around. But like the other stories, ‘Family Dancing’ soon scratches its polished surfaces and considers the rough edges of Middle ...”

“... thinking: ‘I too could have been a contender!’ There are other challenges in Ring of Truth. David Ruddock’s wife, a pious Roman Catholic, feels challenged by the Pope’s visit to Britain and wonders if she ought to become a Bride of Christ. Dave’s young brother, a professional soldier, is called to fight in the Falklands, meeting the reluctant ...”

“... but a Tory government nor by the sound of it ever wants to. At Birmingham I have a session with David Edgar’s playwrights’ class, then do another ‘Our Alan’ performance for a more general audience. 26 January. Run into Tristram Powell. Andrew Devonshire (sic) has done a diary for the Spectator mentioning the memoir of Julian Jebb (edited by ...”

“... nothing was said about his treasonable conduct in the American struggle, and his vituperation of King George, though English law did not recognise, in principle, a subject’s right to divest himself of his allegiance. When he had to make a hasty getaway to France it was because Part One of The Rights was deemed subversive. In Revolutionary France his ...”

“... and political platform for Labour, has been elaborated with the help of Tony Blair’s adviser, David Miliband, and sees Blair’s election as leader as an epochal event, finally settling Labour’s commitment to social democracy. All of which sounds very much as if Hutton hopes to become a key adviser in a future Blair administration, though the Tories may ...”

“... Part II contains several essays by different specialists on the life of the British Empire. David Fieldhouse examines how far it promoted economic development or under-development. Ged Martin and Benjamin Kline discuss emigration and identities. John MacKenzie supplies a piece on imperial art. Finally, Marshall, followed by an Australian, an African and ...”

“... mostly took Hemingway at his macho word and accepted the Life magazine image of him as a bearded king. It took the shock of his suicide to show the thin ice on which his sovereignty stood, and the black depths below.) Despite the formal and practical advantages of waiting, financially it is better to strike while the body is still warm. Editors and agents ...”

“... by Oskar Schlemmer with engaged work by the Mexicans Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The juxtapositions are provocative, but the rationale not clear (unless it is merely that the new MoMA is not hostile to committed figuration). The fourth floor, which covers only 1940-70, also begins in an expected way, with late ...”

“... record already has a title, ‘He Who Makes the Sky Grey’, but no release date is in sight. The king’s son has high hopes for the recording. He recently called a press conference in order to claim that the project ‘intends to bridge the gap between East and West’. Meanwhile, Jackson is in the habit of smiling widely beside his new friend. Things are ...”

“... a bricklayer”.’ The report, later taken up by other papers, was based on a book by David Baldwin, who asserts that the elder prince, the deposed Edward V, died of natural causes and that, after Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth, the younger, Richard of York, was taken to St John’s Abbey in Colchester, where he worked as a ...”

“... the elect separated out from the reprobate? Even ‘Calvinism’ was ticklish. As David Hall points out, not all Calvinists shared the same eschatology, disagreeing about what happened to souls after death.The question of whether to award the capital ‘P’ or not remains a subject of contention among historians. For Hall, a history professor ...”