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“... were persuaded to run over narrow slings of webbing of which one end was held by a gentleman, the other by a lady. The “players” tossed the fox as it walked the tightrope – a good toss being up to twenty-four feet high. Augustus the Strong of Saxony was an enthusiastic fox-tosser and is reputed to ...”

“... Farmer’s​ Glory, the classic agrarian memoir by A.G. Street, was published in 1932. The traditional mixed farm where Arthur Street spent his boyhood in the first decade of the 20th century was the centre of a self-sufficient community, stout in defence of the four-course rotation and despising anything shop-bought ...”

“... runs through his work: ‘No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. (So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend.)’ One reason for his reluctance to identify with adults was that he could hardly look them in the eye. He never grew much beyond five feet, and it is painful to note ...”

“... of Dionysus in late March 2430 years ago, demands an imaginative effort much greater than would be required if you had plumped for a Pinter or an Ibsen or a David Hare. When we hear, for instance, that Aeschylus’ rival Phrynichus was particularly noted for his choreographies, or learn from Peter Wilson in Performance ...”

“... thoughts occur like ‘I bet Tom Stoppard doesn’t have to do this’ or ‘There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.’ So I was happy to read in Gavin Lambert’s Mainly about Lindsay Anderson* that Lindsay harboured similar thoughts about such self-imposed menialities. On the eve of filming O Lucky Man Lindsay has his ailing ...”

“... have come as something of a surprise to Chaucer or Pope. For liberals such as Henry James and David Lodge, it represents a venture into individual consciousness of unique worth – so valuable, in fact, that in this new novel Lodge suspects it may be the summum bonum. ‘Consciousness’ – the very term has an ...”

“... printed books in a plum-coloured binding. I take down a volume, and read on the spine the name ‘David Copperfield’; underneath, in slightly smaller letters, is another name, ‘Charles Dickens’. I open the book, and find the same combination repeated on the title page. I have heard of Dickens, and conclude that what I am holding is a novel written ...”

“... should consider the sentence of hard labour that is the summer/autumn literary festival circuit. David Starkey – to take an almost random example – is talking about his bestselling Life of Elizabeth I not only at the Rye Festival this month (his session’s already sold out, I’m afraid), but at the Ilkley Literature Festival on 7 October, the ...”

“... Angeles County is part of the so-called South Bay, south of Santa Monica. It was mostly populated by middle-class white people when I grew up there in the 1950s, and was a good place in many ways. I played volleyball on the beach, and once a year we had surfing, paddleboard and volleyball championships next to the Manhattan Pier. I graduated from the local ...”

“... best stories in Neonlit: ‘Time Out’ Book of New Writing Volume 2 (1999) is ‘Shelf Life’ by Tom Bromley. The story’s working title, which mysteriously disappeared somewhere between proofs and final publication, was ‘The Curse of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’. The protagonist is a first novel that consistently fails to sell; which wouldn’t ...”

“... the last issue, climate change has made one of its periodic appearances in the headlines, with David Cameron and Gordon Brown each making announcements about what he will do when in office. This amounts to a green beauty contest, with the public in the position of the pen-sucking judges. Cameron first. The Tory leader has hitherto, for all practical ...”

“... was reported as having it in mind to ‘strip some terror suspects of the automatic right to be protected from torture’, should ministers rule that there were ‘overriding considerations of national security’. Knowing as we do that ‘overriding’ here means that considerations so labelled cannot on security grounds ...”

“... hide behind a chair. But at least, in John Braine’s case, we have the assurance that there will be a dialogue, rather than the maundering monologue of Monsieur Songe. The Two of Us, as the novel is called in an act of homage to Supertramp, sets its tone effectively before we start to read with an evocative jacket illustration. Pink clouds portending passion ...”

“... In November of the following year he alerted his readers to the absence, in the art of David Hockney, of ‘the spiritual quest at the heart of modernism’. Several years later, in June 1981, he gave warning that the stained canvases of Morris Louis, the leading member of the ‘Washington Colour School’, did not represent the breakthrough that ...”

“... about Goya’s Black Paintings in Art After Modernism , a collection of essays published in 1984 by the New Museum in downtown New York, Kathy Acker wrote: ‘The only reaction against an unbearable society is equally unbearable nonsense.’ She once said she didn’t expect anyone to read any of her books all the way through from beginning to end: ‘even ...”