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“... single-minded Becky Sharp, high in a coach bound for Russell Square, flings a copy of Johnson’s Dictionary out of the window to land on the grass at the feet of her former teacher, a sworn disciple of the Great Lexicographer. ‘So much for the Dictionary,’ says Becky Sharp as the carriage pulls away, ‘and, thank ...”

“... of love, outrage at foreign invasions of Italy, a dynastic marriage and praise of Ariosto’s patrons, the Este of Ferrara. No part can fairly represent the whole, but one remarkable episode conveys something of the poem’s atmosphere. Orlando, Charlemagne’s right-hand man and ...”

“... Readers who had encountered its first volume would have known that Stephen Koss’s work on the British political press was monumental. Now it has become his monument in another, brutally unexpected sense, for Stephen Koss died suddenly soon after the completion of the second volume. The outrage felt by everyone who had known or read him had something to do with his youth, but more to do with the cutting-off of his gifts ...”

“... David Solkin​ ’s new book is designed to replace Painting in Britain 1530-1790, a volume of the Pelican history of art by Ellis Waterhouse, which was first published in 1953 and appeared in five separate editions, the last in 1994, nine years after Waterhouse’s death ...”

“... I.A. Richards gave the lectures that became his book Practical Criticism he attracted audiences so large they couldn’t fit into the lecture hall. In the course of a career that allowed him plenty of time for reading and writing – he wasn’t one to be corralled into administrative duties – Griffiths published only a monograph about Victorian poetry ...”

“... Kenneth Branagh​ ’s Belfast is set in the early months of the Troubles, in a mixed working-class district that is cleared of its Catholic residents by a loyalist mob. Paving stones are lifted to barricade the end of the street. Neighbourhood vigilantes are replaced by paramilitaries and the British army. Though the representation of events is spare and often stylised, the film catches the impact of the crisis not just on smashed and burned terraced houses but on the fabric of everyday decency ...”

“... Grandpierre-Deverzy exhibited The Studio of Abel de Pujol, a painting of her teacher’s workshop. More than a dozen female trainees are shown going about their business. A little group looks over de Pujol’s shoulder as he critiques a sketch; others make copies from paintings selected for their improving moral ...”

“... his wife and young son. His mental health had been deteriorating, according to the Ipswich Star’s report of the inquest, since the previous May. His wife, Zoe, told the inquest that they had been seeking help for him, but the local NHS trust hadn’t been able to offer anything beyond a telephone chat with a GP. ‘The hospital services are always attentive ...”

“... her for posterity. When a memorial to her was finally put up in 1909, it was to ‘Dr Johnson’s Mrs Thrale’. In one of his last missives to his ‘dear mistress’, shortly before her marriage to Piozzi caused him to burn all her letters, Johnson credited Hester with soothing ‘twenty years of a life radically wretched’. He even had his own rooms ...”

“... and the ‘leveraged-buyout king’. The book is illustrated with photographs of de Pury’s friends, such as Tita Thyssen-Bornemisza (wearing a ‘100+ carat diamond’), Al Taubman and Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis. De Pury was private curator to Baron ‘Heini’ – Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza – then chairman of Sotheby’...”

“... could have given him, but he wasn’t interested in that: he would be president himself one day. So it came to pass. As president, Johnson took advantage of all the powers of office he had done his best to preserve intact. These powers, along with his secretive and manipulative personality, allowed him to drag the country step by step into the Vietnam ...”

“... Boswell’s life of Boswell has reached its conclusion, this being the 13th in the series of journals brought out by the team responsible for the Yale Editions of his Private Papers. It opens two hundred years ago in London, during the winter of 1789. Frosty weather – the widower is warm against ‘the French insurrection ...”

“... from a mansion with 11 servants to a small house in Lausanne where he lived with his second wife’s ex-maid, Georges Simenon dictated his Letter to My Mother, Henriette Simenon née Brüll, who had died four years earlier. He wants, he says, to understand her at last. To accomplish this he returns to the week he spent with her in hospital before her ...”

“... a slight revulsion in people’ to the point that everybody ignores you, probably because you’re so ‘ill at ease’ in yourself? You might do worse than get into the surveillance industry, Virginie Despentes suggests in Apocalypse Baby, spying on the unhappy teenage children of rich Parisians. The sector is booming and dullness and directionlessness are a ...”

“... March 1936, a few days after the German invasion of the Rhineland, Nancy Astor threw a party at 4 St James’s Square. As well as being the first woman MP (elected in 1919), Astor was a legendary hostess. To this particular dinner party she invited various League of Nations delegates, the American and Russian ...”