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“... knowing that in writing these texts he may risk becoming an ethnic performer who will see himself reading To congregations of the educated Sipping wine, attentive between courses – See the applause fluttering from their white hands Like so many messy table napkins. In some ways, Dabydeen stands in the position of McIlvanney or the Dunn of ...”

“... and Davie are included in both anthologies, but to read their collected poems (the next step after reading Davie’s superb ‘Time Passing, Beloved’ and Gunn’s ‘On the Move’ in O’Brien) is to see how the Movement contains the germ of its own undoing in these restless and questing poets. In fact, the only thing that keeps the Movement sensibility ...”

“... was that this novel, and its successors, represent the author’s greatest achievement. Ray’s reading of Thackeray’s fiction was based on what he called ‘the buried life’ to be found in them; and in his view even the late novels, written when Thackeray was chronically sick, were works of genius. Thackeray was undervalued by posterity because, unlike ...”

“... outlined for me the consequences of such a proof being valid. Independently of this, I had been reading Bertrand Russell’s diaries and I wanted to write a story which would somehow illustrate the way diary writing, in its selectivity, closely resembles fiction writing. Thirdly, I wanted to write about the collision of two intellectual worlds. In 1972 I ...”

“... Another recent biography of a leading modern artist was composed under similar restrictions. Peter Ackroyd says he was ‘forbidden by the Eliot estate to quote from Eliot’s published work, except for purposes of fair comment in a critical context, or to quote from Eliot’s unpublished work or correspondence’. As it happens, the two subjects, while ...”

“... Dillard (1945-) and Ann Beattie (1947-). Heavy in the hand, the Companion makes for pretty light reading: Joan Didion is helpfully described as the author of ‘nonfictional works on contemporary life’; the ‘Beat movement’ as ‘a bohemian rebellion against established society which came to prominence about 1956’; David Ignatow’s poetic idiom as ...”

“... city. For some, it has been almost synonymous with modern, indeed with capitalist society. Michael Peter Smith reminds us, in his book on The City and Social Theory, of the urban concerns of Louis Wirth, Georg Simmel, Theodor Roszak and Richard Sennet. (For some strange reason, Smith adds Sigmund Freud to the list, but this merely shows that his book is in the ...”

“... a transvestite in a cultural representation,’ she writes, ‘signals a category crisis.’ So in Peter Pan, the subject of one of the most telling chapters in the book, ‘category crises are everywhere,’ – crises about class, gender and the differences between adults and children. This simple point, that one category always suggests another, leads ...”

“... is to colour the world grey. It can impair memory, concentration and attention span, and make reading almost impossible. It flattens the emotions, causes you to feel physically heavy and lethargic and often makes people seem mere shadows of themselves. Jamison, like many others, found it intolerable, stopped taking it once she started to feel better ...”

“... is the relationship of the frames to architectural motifs and to other types of furniture. Peter Thornton’s The Italian Renaissance Interior is a long, erudite and entertaining investigation of such matters as how rooms were lit and heated, how ceilings were constructed and decorated, where carpets came from and how they were displayed. It is chiefly ...”

“... brother to America in 1928, where her love for glittering New York made her hate herself. After reading Daughter of Earth, a novel by the radical journalist Agnes Smedley, she joined the American Communist Party. She returned to Germany just in time for the Wall Street Crash and, refusing financial help from her family, married Hamburger and set up house in ...”

“... Peter Hennessy’s new book hasn’t persuaded me that its central preoccupation, the current dispute over prime ministerial power and its extent, is not sterile and, indeed, rather boring – yet it is a splendid read. The truth is that the Westminster system is quite inadequately democratic and transparent, and Hennessy is, if anything, too respectful and conventional in his proposals about how the office might be reformed ...”

“... there was only one child, a girl. This was a mistake: she was supposed to have been a boy called Peter, and although she was baptised Gerda Erika Maria, her father never called her anything but Peter. Appearances mattered to the young Rösels. My mother has told me that my grandmother went hungry so that she could afford ...”

“... laid out what they had found: the official history of the Soviet Communist Party, obligatory reading for CP members, and a book in German about Dürer. When James reported for duty at the War Office, he was casually asked why he hadn’t reported the home visit. James explained that he had no idea whom he should inform. The major took the point, and ...”

“... In the warlord incubators that were the northern valleys, I didn’t see any. I saw no one reading, except for an outdoor class of boys learning the Koran by rote, and nothing on sale that could be read. Basir’s concerns were for the illiterate commanders’ future employment prospects, but what about the consequences of ignorance in their present ...”