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“... scenery is unbelievably impractical.’ Lota came from an aristocratic Brazilian family, and was a close friend of Carlos Lacerda, an up-and-coming politician. Robert Giroux quotes Elizabeth Hardwick describing Lota as ‘very intense indeed, emotional, also a bit insecure as we say, and loyal, devoted and smart and lesbian and Brazilian and shy, masterful in ...”

“... in power, did not please Allott, who dissented from the view expressed by both Robert Conquest and Frank Kermode that Gunn’s early poems hinted at ‘the prospect of a major poet’. Allott had two reasons: one was ‘the element of romantic immaturity that lies behind what is apparently at present Mr Gunn’s favourite poetic stance’, the other was ‘the ...”

“... moreover, the elimination of ‘connotations’ leaves us with a weaker idea, uncomfortably close to tautology. Jenkins should have left Shakespeare’s word in the text, and added a footnote on its ‘connotations’. But of course an editor may modernise without being insensitive, just as we may object to this instance without attacking modernisation ...”

“... were appalled that at the last minute they were denied the authority to implement a plan to close the German border. Pro-AfD sentiment appears to be widespread in the police. In the autumn of 2018, Merkel was forced to sack Hans-Georg Maaßen as head of the internal security service (Verfassungsschutz) after he tried to discredit disturbing video ...”

“... his pre-crisis views: cut state benefits, allow housing repossessions, repeal many of the Dodd-Frank reforms of the banking system, eliminate or reduce deficit spending, and ensure that labour markets remain open to wage-lowering competition from foreign workers. Political pressures to reverse deregulation, it seems to Greenspan, can best be fended off by ...”

“... of thinking they were all up to much the same thing. The openness of that great domain began to close around the time that Lennon discovered self-discovery in earnest. Structural cracks appeared in the façades and these became fissures; screens went up, partitions were built, it suddenly felt like an enormous flat-conversion. ‘Personal space’ began to ...”

“... even on the eve of war’: it’s as if this article – as if Woodward himself – was that close to changing the whole course of history.This isn’t the Martha Mitchell Effect, by the way, but the delusion that people who work closely with power often have: that they’re more powerful than they think. It’s also about covering your ass. I don’t ...”

“... Walter Scott’s Waverley novels: honourable if rather dozy young Englishmen such as Rob Roy’s Frank Osbaldistone who undertake perilous expeditions into the wild regions north of the border. These young men turn out to possess a combative streak perfectly calibrated to rub the locals up the wrong way. So we shouldn’t be surprised that what most appeals ...”

“... World freeing itself, through armed conflict, from the stranglehold of the First – was still close enough, alive enough, for it to provide the main thread of his story. He knew, of course, that the revolution had failed at the same time as it had succeeded. Yet the promise it had held out, of a world scoured of the cruellest forms of abjection and ...”

“... through this volume of what he would have called ‘good letters’ from this warm, direct, frank and clever man – intensely clever, exceptionally gifted and intelligent – it is impossible not to sense also his elusiveness: the literary quality that parallels his knack of evading not only female but male friends too, like sparkling water. Returning ...”

“... of Zuma’s government, which had itself been captured by big business. Zuma had especially close ties to the notorious Gupta brothers, who now face possible extradition from the UAE to answer criminal charges in South Africa. Calata spoke out against the ‘despotic rule’ of the SABC’s chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng. On the day of his ...”

“... opening, there were 73 houses, and by 1914 there were 471. Near Harrow I saw a patch of allotments close to the line. There is a property developer lurking inside everyone who has lived in London for a few years, like the Incredible Hulk lurking inside Bruce Banner, and I found myself wondering how much they’d be worth if they were sold for housing. From the ...”

“... or any other playwright.”’ And a similarly recommendable though much briefer introduction, Frank Kermode’s to his Riverside edition, confines itself to an elegant review of the play’s problems, chronological, textual and critical. Kermode calls Hamlet ‘the first great tragedy Europe had produced for two thousand years’, but he declines the ...”

“... Like many ostensibly ancient British rituals, the Promenade Concerts were founded towards the close of the 19th century, shortly after the Queen’s Hall opened as a new musical venue in 1893. As such, they may be regarded as a classic instance of what is sometimes called ‘invented tradition’, where venerable antiquity is less in evidence than is often popularly supposed; and where change and adaptation are at least as important as continuity and survival, even though the former are often disguised or mistakenly perceived as the latter ...”

“... the maladroit interference of Harold Watkinson, the Transport Minister, and the intransigence of Frank Cousins, the TGWU leader: it was the first great set-piece battle between a union and the government. Shepherd brings this out well but misses altogether the significance of the strike which stands, as we look back, at the very centre of our recent social ...”