“... best-selling writers, their business is not in the main literary, and in 1972 the prizewinner, John Berger, made a speech in which he expressly deplored what he regarded as the exploitative nature of the donor’s principal interest; indeed he gave half his prize to a revolutionary movement. Other writers have shown some embarrassment but have not, so far ...”

“... on the down escalator at nine o’clock in the morning. When the Number 30 passed a statue of John F. Kennedy in Marylebone Road, a teenager looked up at his mother. ‘It all started with him,’ he said. ‘I know what you mean,’ his mother said. ‘He was the first to get this amount of coverage.’ In Regent’s Park rows of old ladies were sitting ...”

“... Ziolkowski says, he unthinkingly obeys the protocol of courtly etiquette, and thereby forgets the Christian imperative of charity. Arguably, he has repressed the instinct of compassion; in that sense, he is inhibited. But Parzival is a gormless hero, not a hesitant one. He doesn’t ask himself: ‘What should I do?’ He just sits there like a ...”

“... as one put it, ‘the true Christ spirit’. She was struck by the Sermon on the Mount, not by the Christian religion. ‘To me,’ she said, ‘Jesus was a poor working-man socialist of genius, a sort of Keir Hardie!’ Schreiner’s was a healing, redemptive vision, compassionate towards men’s errors, and independent of a party line. During the First World ...”

“... Frances Yates, Rykwert discusses the interest in architecture shown by the Elizabethan magus John Dec and the possible connection between Dee and Inigo Jones. So far, so good: Perrault had not written yet. But it turns out – another exciting discovery – that Sir Christopher Wren, despite his admiration for Perrault’s writings, was also interested ...”

“... to get away from her mother – they share a room – and spies an escape route in Master John Edes, a mild-mannered shipping clerk who has been teaching her to read the gospel. But Edes is an associate of a sinister newcomer called Matthew Hopkins, who is on a mission to root out witchcraft. In wartime Manningtree, Puritan fervour is running ...”

“... and terrified by everything that went on around him, Morell is the sort of figure every decent John Buchan chap loves to hate. (Mr Irving likens him to Lord Moran, Churchill’s physician – could it be his contempt for the Establishment that explains a comparison as inaccurate as it is insulting?) Morell was as well-informed on most aspects of internal ...”

“... author’s, has been burned away in the refining fire of bibliographical theory. On the other side John Kidd champions an imperfect but historically authentic Ulysses, a book produced partly by genius, partly by accident, partly by the exigencies of the printing-shop. In matters of wording and punctuation, the differences between one Ulysses and the other are ...”

“... and elsewhere. Vidal describes the process through the eyes of his characters, Brooks Adams, John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt and a host of others. While Kennedy coolly analyses everything in terms of long-term trends, Vidal’s concerns are with the personalities involved – the indecisive McKinley and the ludicrous Teddy Roosevelt. His latest collection ...”

“... of its precursor is not altogether to the novel’s advantage. The revelations are made by John James Todd, a forgotten film-director in Mediterranean exile putting his memories in order. These are varied enough: born in Edinburgh in 1899, Todd proves largely ineducable but has a talent for mathematics and holding a camera. He endures an unsympathetic ...”

“... writing against the background of McCarthyism, told it in The Devils of Loudun (1952), which John Whiting turned into a play, The Devils (1961), which was itself the basis for Ken Russell’s 1971 film of the same name. There is also a more recent account, Robert Rapley’s A Case of Witchcraft (1998). Michel de Certeau’s Possession at Loudun, first ...”

“... tragedy. Denied the dignity of his tragic heroism, the noble Hamlet is a destructive force. In John Updike’s recent novel Gertrude and Claudius, Hamlet is still more unlovable. He is coldly manipulative, while his kingly father is reduced to a clumsy and egotistical bully. Updike is also engaged in an act of rehabilitation. But he turns his attention to ...”

“... a redistricting map that sews up the outcome of a congressional election. In 2019, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that although the Supreme Court ‘does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering’, any court-mandated intervention in district maps would inevitably look partisan and impugn the court’s neutrality. In 2017, during arguments in a ...”

“... rights. For many, the coronation oath was the guarantee of this mutually beneficial relationship. John Rastell, a legal publisher, wrote in 1527 that the monarch ‘shall grant to hold the laws and customs of the realm and to his power keep them and affirm them, which the folk and people have made and chosen’.As a result of this constitutional ...”

“... in Wheatley’s verse residues of African spiritual practices and memories of her birthplace. John Shields has argued that her elegies are compatible with African animist traditions, and proposes that her background was with the Fula people. Odell said Phillis described her mother pouring water ‘before the sun at his rising’, which has led some to ...”