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“... Neil Young – who performed his forthcoming album, Harvest, at a party in John’s house – and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who, when Elton went to see him, sang the chorus of ‘Your Song’ (‘I hope you don’t mind/I hope you don’t mind’) over and over. ‘By now, the novelty of hearing the chorus of “Your Song” sung to me by one of pop ...”

“... has become known, was now embarked on and is detailed lucidly, as are all stages of the affair, in Brian Cathcart’s book. Why the police performed so abysmally at this point has become a matter of debate: did they set out to fail in their investigation of the crime because of Lawrence’s colour or were they simply incompetents who would not have succeeded ...”

“... glorifying the work of the Velvet Underground over Motown releases, the production skills of Brian Wilson over those of Norman Whitfield, and the social significance and songwriting talent of John Lennon rather than James Brown – persists. Clearly, too, most rock writing foregrounds lyrics, whereas most dance music works through texture, beats and ...”

“... synth/beat-box tech I personally called to mind weren’t so pale: Timmy Thomas, Shuggie Otis, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Lee Perry.)But Schütte isn’t finished yet. Kraftwerk’s influence, it seems, also determined every molecule of 1980s electro-pop. They ‘set the blueprint for all later bands and musicians working in the area of electronic music’. I ...”

“... Worn-out, jet-lagged, tied to itineraries, he lost touch with the elemental basics of Glanmore (‘stone, slate … cold water, open hearths’) and felt reduced to ‘the “mask” of S.H.’, a ‘mascot’. The public celebration of his seventieth birthday, he told one of his most trusted correspondents, the historian Eamon Duffy, left him ‘feeling that ...”

“... the clear light, like poetry or freedom’ (‘Oysters’). Foster quotes a letter written to Brian Friel while Field Work was gestating: ‘I don’t want any more doors into the dark: I want a door into the light.’ That aspiration tallies with the purposeful change of direction he noted in the typically self-interrogative speech he delivered in 1995 ...”

“... very quiet passages with booming chords played by both hands in parallel, chunky as blocks of stone.1 He also set Latour’s poetry to music, and the Trois Sarabandes of 1887, Satie’s first suite, were inspired by Latour’s esoteric poem ‘La Perdition’ (‘Suddenly all was revealed and the damned fell/Shrieking and jostling in a whirl ...”

“... Street to record a voiceover (of my own voice) for an episode of Family Guy, the story being that Brian, the dog, has written a play, premiering at Quahog, which ‘all the playwrights’ (i.e. Yasmina Reza, David Mamet and me) duly go and see – and rubbish. They had first of all asked if they could use me as a cartoon character to which I graciously agreed ...”

“... inventions – and food.Food gives both solid reality and delicious longing to children’s books. Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series about monastic chivalric mice, was a milkman when he began volunteering to read at a school for the blind. He found himself horrified by the quality of the books he was reading, and decided to write his own ...”

“... The bigger part of our income comes from subsidies we get for environmental work – keeping the stone walls and fences in order, maintaining stock-proof dykes, burning heather, off-wintering trees.’‘Can’t you make anything from the sheep?’ I asked.‘No,’ he said. ‘We are selling livestock way below the cost of production. Subsidies were ...”

“... the last few years this readerly hesitation has been supplemented by the able scholarship of Brian Vickers, first in the pages of the TLS and then in a book published last year.† Vickers has a double aim: to argue that ‘A Lover’s Complaint’ is simply too bad to be Shakespearean but competent enough to be the work of John Davies of Hereford, a ...”

“... when transcribed to a musical staff. Then there is the curse of arid musicology; and of Rolling Stone-ism, the gonzo rock journalist who thinks he is a rock star. Perhaps worst of all, there is the curse of the rhetoric of social action and ‘revolution’, a faith-based illusion that pop songs clearly manifest social history, or an exaggerated sense of ...”

“... stalled – a phenomenon which none of the books mentions. In one of his novels, Patrick O’Brian has his character Stephen Maturin say: ‘Have you ever known a village reputation to be wrong?’ Cherie (I’m going to call her that to avoid confusion with the other Blair) has a village reputation which stresses her ambivalent relationship with fame ...”

“... to the margins’. There, pockets of Whig resistance no doubt remain – readers of Lawrence Stone’s correspondence with Russell in the TLS not so long ago might be surprised to learn the field had become so pacific. Yet even Stone has conceded the second part of the victory the revisionists claim. For he, too, has ...”

“... will burrow down as deep and as fast as Ada and Phyllis can carry them. ‘We should leave no stone unturned or unfracked,’ Boris Johnson said, ‘in the cause of keeping the lights on in London.’ The mania​ for boreholes reminded me of a cautionary tale by Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘When the World Screamed’. Doyle’s crazed superman ...”