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“... the ‘classic realist mode’: their understanding of the conventions of that mode may make them anxious to break free and try something else, but that is a sequel that may or may not occur – in Lodge’s case it doesn’t. So Carey, although he ends by commending ...”

“... and from old materials thrown hurriedly together without a due attempt to ascertain what they may have lost of their value from age.’ The Shell Guide is not altogether in that category, although it is not much of a recommendation for the author to claim that he has relied in part on ‘books written by two magnificent Victorians, Edward Walford and ...”

“... social mobility always remains a strong possibility for everyone, however illusory the idea may often be in practice. Later, 19th-century adventure novels set in the past, such as Kingsley’s Westward Ho! or Hereward the Wake, helped to foster the imperial ideal by suggesting that it was natural for Britains to seek an outlet overseas for all the manly ...”

“... well aware that his attitudes on this question were far from universally shared: indeed, that they may well have inverted those which most of his contemporaries conventionally expressed. ‘I cannot abide,’ he wrote, ‘that passion for caressing newborn children, which have neither mental activities nor recognisable bodily shape by which to make them ...”

“... what it means to move to the middle ground, of course. The fabled Republican negative campaigners may have a problem with exploiting it, even so. I can’t see them choosing to emphasise how soft money finances hard politics. In this, as in many issues between the parties, there is a kind of Mutual Assured Destruction which prevents the eruption of ...”

“... over the brow of a hill, the sight that has been seen in England since England was a land, and may be seen in England long after the empire has perished and every works in England has ceased to function, for centuries the one eternal sight of England.In fact, at the time Baldwin spoke that heart-stopping sight had not been seen for decades in large parts ...”

“... Early​ results matter in politics. The news on the morning of 6 May seemed to confirm a familiar story. Labour had taken two totemic Tory councils, Wandsworth and Westminster, piling on metropolitan voters but failing to ignite the electorate outside the cities. Tory losses were bigger than expected, and by the end of the day looked very bad indeed: the cumulative loss was 485 seats; before the election the Mail had warned that anything over four hundred should be seen as a ‘disaster ...”

“... and forming the Moon from the debris produced by the impact. Collisions between large bodies may also be responsible for altering the rotation of Venus, which takes longer to spin on its axis than it does to orbit the Sun and hence has a day longer than its year; for the surprising density of Mercury, which may once ...”

“... the transfer market and agents under their control; in this way success was assured. In May 2006, this system was laid bare. Juventus are used to coming first. By 1994, they had won the Italian football championship – or scudetto – a record 22 times. Yet by their high standards they were in a slump. One scudetto in nine seasons was not enough to ...”

“... seem nonplussed by the need for all this self-promotion, distrusting the visitors their sites may attract. ‘If you are a lazy and/or unimaginative journalist,’ A.L. Kennedy chaffs on her website, ‘you may consider using the material contained in these pages to pad out your ...”

“... people today, having gone through the purgative fires of Thatcherism, all that community spirit may seem too good – or too illogical – to be true, a myth. Historians have been quick to point out exceptions: instances of defeatism, disloyalty and people taking advantage of wartime conditions to loot, steal, cheat and kill undetected. ITV’s Foyle’s ...”

“... also a defeat for traditional norms of parliamentary government. This scenario will be repeated in May, when the coalition government puts the proposal to alter the voting system to a referendum: leading Conservatives will be urging people to vote no while remaining bound together with Clegg and his fellow Lib Dems as the coalition pushes the rest of its ...”

“... It may be too soon to be passing judgment on the Cameron government. But it does sometimes look as if we are back with the impatient legislation of the Blair era, along with the facile soundbites, the eye-catching initiatives, the whitewashed sleaze, the fawning towards the tabloids (in Blairspeak, ‘managing the relationship’), and the unwillingness or inability to think through the implications of under-researched policy decisions – tendencies which in the end came to be deplored by many of Blair’s one-time supporters as well as his opponents ...”

“... Honan is deeper into his life than his works, and if his grasp of the context is loose, we may be nervous about his judgment on matters of major fact. The chief cause of nervousness appears in his subtitle: ‘Poet and Spy’. We are to imagine that these two aspects of Marlowe’s life are equivalent, or equally established. They are not. Marlowe the ...”

“... economical, even subtle. Sniggerers will have a field day with Port Mungo. Some of its absurdities may be deliberate (the narrator is clearly and rather programmatically undermined throughout the book). But not many, I think. For a start, the narrator is supposed to be a woman, but she doesn’t sound like one. She sounds like a hammy male actor in late middle ...”