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“... misogynist central character, John, is as compromised and unappealing as the disgraced David Lurie. But perhaps Youth is being taken too seriously, and we are meant to mock this grim young man and the Conradian title that portentously frames his rite of passage. A good deal depends on whether we read Youth as fiction or autobiography. It was ...”

“... In the Thirties and early Forties the English poet David Gascoyne was much enamoured of the Continental, Late Romantic image of writing and of the writer as a visionary misfit. By the end of the Thirties, his place in the great Euro-Visionary Song Contest was almost secured. He confessed his ambition in his Journals in 1938: Want to write an essay on ‘The Apotheosis of Lautréamont ...”

“... of surtitles would suggest.) It disdains understatement or ambiguity. Profligate with its means, opera characteristically fails to support its compulsive gesturing with adequate syntax: a two-minute Lied by Wolf concentrates more musical argument into its dramatic adventure than an hour of Cavalleria Rusticana. The grand original principle of dramma ...”

“... world of his childhood destroyed, and was never again able to find a place in which to belong. As David Cesarani puts it in the closing lines of this monumental (it is the only word) biography, for Koestler ‘home represented the secure bourgeois domesticity swept away by the Great War; home was a country that rejected him and connived in the slaughter of ...”

“... shout their presence (the radically different visual effect of the original is illustrated in David Norton’s The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today, as well as in Campbell’s own Bible, another history of the KJB). It’s a pity, but the change emphasises just how remote the modern ‘King James’ Bible is from its original. It ...”

“... There are two major problems with contemporary British society, according to David Goodhart in The British Dream, and both are primarily caused by immigration. The first problem is economic: the plight of the white working class, especially the young, and the decline of social mobility. Goodhart argues that low-skilled immigrants have taken jobs from unskilled natives, leaving them languishing on benefits, while high-skilled immigration reduces both the incentives and opportunities for ambitious and talented natives to move up the ladder ...”

“... Though few anticipated the agreement, it is not difficult to understand why David Cameron and Nick Clegg should have made a bargain to share power. By forming a coalition Cameron secured protection from his mutinous right wing, while Clegg became the pivotal player in British politics. What is more surprising is the degree of unity the government has so far exhibited ...”

“... On 22 March​ 2012, David Cameron visited Kings Science Academy in Bradford, one of the first wave of 24 free schools that opened in September 2011. You can see footage of his visit online. The prime minister walks through the playground, hampered by children in grey blazers, with the school’s headteacher, Sajid Raza, at his elbow ...”

“... the vapid tax-and-spend policies they had drifted into. Their new spokesmen – Vincent Cable, David Laws and Mark Oaten – are the first prominent Liberals since Jo Grimond who could seriously claim to be heirs of the Grand Old Man. Political commentators point out that parties make such shifts because otherwise they have little hope of getting ...”

“... simply take the seven shillings from Thomas. Not only does the law forbid it, Thomas’s wealth means he probably has the power to take it back (or worse). So without access to a court, Alice has to rely on his goodwill for her money and her surcoat. This shows the first reason to care about access to justice, by which I mean being in a position to have ...”

“... identical complement of nuclear genes – clones, in the vernacular – could only be achieved by means of the transfer of nuclei from embryonic cells, and then only in non-mammalian species. There were excellent grounds for insisting on the impossibility of cloning from adult cells. For, although virtually all the cells in a mature animal contain the same ...”

“... in its own destiny in this respect. Its peculiar saving mission, that of liberating mankind by means of the creation of wealth, would make little sense without some underlying faith in the prospect, perhaps even the certainty, of limitless improvement. The author of The Idea of Progress in 18th-Century Britain, an interesting and carefully crafted ...”

“... conservation in certain respects implies political conservatism, whether reverence for the land means reverence for the nation, whether there is not something fascistic about the atavism of deep Green thinking. Malthus is often viewed as little better than a fascist, yet, as Gore recognises in Earth in the Balance, his inexorable principles of population ...”

“... remark, made by a bystander and reported in an early book on the case. Congru, we learn, means correct, grammatical. ‘One doesn’t have to be a demon in order not to know Latin,’ Johnson slyly adds; but then one probably isn’t a demon if one doesn’t since fluency in all tongues is an orthodox, privileged sign of demonic possession. Daniel is ...”

“... to his Republican opponent in November’s Presidential election. But if Dayton is to work, this means that an inordinate amount of political progress has to be made in Bosnia in a ludicrously short time. If the constitutional status of Bosnia-Hercegovina remains unclear at the end of Ifor’s mandate, then there is a good chance of the country sliding back ...”