“... to Petrarchan scholars, and Christopher Celenza tucks into them with quiet determination in his short life-and-works overview, Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer. The subtitle is taken from one of Petrarch’s verse letters, where he describes himself as ‘peregrinus ubique’ (more precisely translated as ‘everywhere a pilgrim’). He was indeed a restless ...”

“... Couzens’s conviction for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a police commissioner, Philip Allott, resigned after giving a radio interview suggesting that Everard should not have ‘submitted’ to arrest by her killer, who was, at the time, a serving police officer.Newton also cross-examined Harvey about her ‘sweetheart’ in Wellington; she ...”

“... the interplay between a bourgeois hanging on to an ageing modernity and the counter-culture,’ Philip Mann writes in The Dandy At Dusk: Taste and Melancholy in the 20th Century (2017), ‘that makes the 1970s.’As Kraftwerk developed their new, distinctive sound, they also evinced a talent for supplying quotes of the sort that on-the-make young music ...”

“... do so. For much of the 18th century, these were limited in number, comprising a handful of small, short-lived institutions. London’s first commercial showcase of contemporary art, organised in 1760 by a group calling itself the Present Artists, included work by Katharine Read and the future Academician Mary Moser; exhibitions held subsequently by two rival ...”

“... in this biographical round-up as the spouse of the subject of another biography, Rebel: The Short Life of Esmond Romilly, by Kevin Ingram. But then what else can we expect if they will marry a Duke of Devonshire (Deborah), Sir Oswald Mosley (Diana), the Communist nephew of Winston Churchill (Jessica), the inspiration of Waugh’s Basil Seal ...”

“... let his ‘bummers’ loose among the civilian population, telling them to do what they would, short of mass rape and murder. When he set out on his march to the sea from Atlanta, he promised to ‘make Georgia howl!’ and ‘make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms’. By ‘ruin’, he meant everything from ...”

“... for American writers who prefer the national mannerism of the barbaric yawp. Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Rush are exact contemporaries, born in 1933. McCarthy excels at antique dialogue and rapturous word-pictures of frontier landscapes; likes to portray violence; won’t represent thought; can’t do women; and has denounced Henry James and the ...”

“... for which Watt’s very title, with or without sceptical quotation marks, remains the usual short-hand designation.’ From the 1980s onwards, attack was the dominant mode of engagement. Parodying the accumulating barrage, Lennard J. Davis wrote that Watt ‘made some really big mistakes’: He thought there was ‘a’ novel; he thought it had a ...”

“... and his assistants have embarked. The two most uneventful years in what remained of King’s short life begin in the wake of victory, with the bombing of four black churches and two ministers’ homes (this time, unlike a year earlier, the dynamite on King’s front porch failed to explode); they continue through the formation of the Southern Christian ...”

“... region found hard evidence of mendacity and theft. Two men have been arrested in the US. Philip Bloom is charged with conspiracy, fraud, money laundering and other offences. He is said to have rigged bids and bribed CPA officials who awarded his companies contracts worth $3.5 million. Bloom appears to be a small-time wheeler-dealer. More interesting ...”

“... dealers, calls Thomas at home to tell him which books she’s found, and visits a friend called Philip Maurel in his shop, where he sells ancient coins. The reader might notice a ripple of trouble in what Tara tells us about her marriage: they used to travel together but have stopped; their phone conversation ‘lapses imperceptibly into a kind of audio ...”

“... fretting to escape the inconvenience of some vulgar stiff and get at those rough flint churches. Philip Larkin (sans bicycle clips) with a Byronic makeover. Larkin reimagined by Barbara Cartland, all scowls and flashing coattails, piercing glances. This wholesome, outdoorsy Englishness, bracing weather and privatised mayhem between consenting adults, has a ...”

“... and unconvinced, marred in their judgments by a ‘fatal distaste for self-criticism’, as Philip Martin puts it. In J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, the dodgy English professor David Lurie’s seduction of his student is bound up with his admiration for Byron’s poetry, Lara in particular.It’s easy to forget, in this context, that Byron was the same poet ...”

“... daughter?’ When rebels stormed Lisbon’s Ribeira Palace, the viceroy, Margaret of Savoy (Philip IV’s cousin), fled and bonfires were lit to welcome Portugal’s rightful king. João became John IV, known as ‘the Restorer’. Catherine was elevated to Infanta.Portugal’s newfound independence was vulnerable and the Braganzas needed ...”

“... an examination of ideas and their influence might be Felix Holt, the Radical. On the surface, this short novel has quite a lot in common with the novels I have been discussing in these lectures, especially Crime and Punishment and The Red and the Black. The hero is a Radical of independent mind. He comes from the lower middle class, is poor, indifferent to his ...”