Paintings about Painting

Nicholas Penny, 4 August 1983

The Art of Describing 
by Svetlana Alpers.
Murray, 273 pp., £25, May 1983, 0 7195 4063 1
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“... air, light – ‘dewy vapour and sunshine’ in the case of Cuyp – which cannot be owned or held. Dutch genre paintings, on the other hand, do record with love and care a good deal of immaculate opulence and in many still-lives we are presented with piles of luxury goods. The treasures painted by Kalf nestling against rumpled Turkey carpets on marble ...”

Prince and Pimp

Paul Foot, 1 January 1998

The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken 
by Luke Harding and David Leigh.
Penguin, 205 pp., £6.99, December 1997, 0 14 027290 9
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“... to more dramatic revelations in the Guardian and on Granada’s World in Actionprogramme, Aitken held a press conference in Tory Central Office. It fell to him, he intoned, to take up what he called ‘the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play’ against the ‘cancer of bitter and twisted journalism’. He sued for libel. This was ...”

The Life of Henri Grippes

Jonathan Coe, 18 September 1997

Selected Stories 
by Mavis Gallant.
Bloomsbury, 887 pp., £25, April 1997, 0 7475 3251 6
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“... Gallant has been offered a regular platform under the benign aegis of William Maxwell and, later, David Menaker. Although they span almost half a century – the earliest was published in 1953, the latest in 1995, Gallant’s 73rd year – they are nonetheless eerily consistent in voice and preoccupation. Gallant writes about exiled people: characters in ...”

Diary

Christopher Hadley: The Lake Taupo Stamp, 18 September 1997

“... post. Its manufacturing process, which was an inconvenience to the New Zealand printers, held the key to the accident which created the ‘Lake Taupo’. On one occasion between the years 1902 and 1904 a printer was careless and passed the paper through the press for the second time the wrong way round. There was therefore a sheet of 80 4d Pictorials ...”

Das Nuffa Dat and BigGloria3

Elaine Showalter: Up and Down the Academic Ladder, 1 November 2001

Academic Instincts 
by Marjorie Garber.
Princeton, 187 pp., £11.95, February 2001, 9780691049700
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Postmodern Pooh 
by Frederick Crews.
North Point, 175 pp., $22, October 2001, 0 86547 626 8
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“... Fish. Fish’s salaries and lecture fees have been part of the lore of academic culture since David Lodge’s Changing Places (1975), where he appeared thinly disguised as Morris Zapp, who, ‘enviably offered his first job by Euphoria State, had stuck out for twice the going salary, and got it’; and who had ‘the professional killer instinct’ in a ...”

Going Electric

Patrick McGuinness: J.H. Prynne, 7 September 2000

Poems 
by J.H. Prynne.
Bloodaxe/Folio/Fremantle Arts Centre, 440 pp., £25, March 2000, 1 85224 491 7
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Pearls that Were 
by J.H. Prynne.
Equipage, 28 pp., £4, March 1999, 1 900968 95 9
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Triodes 
by J.H. Prynne.
Barque, 42 pp., £4, December 1999, 9781903488010
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Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 
edited by Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain.
Wesleyan, 280 pp., $45, March 1999, 0 8195 2241 4
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“... are still in evidence:        Causing the charm, the pause never so alertly        held abeyantly to flood entire        its moderate premium diving like a crashed star in salt water, outbroken fire. In Prynne’s poems we find metamorphoses, spectacular and menacing natural phenomena, manmade disasters and cosmic ructions tapering down ...”

Putting on Some English

Terence Hawkes: Eagleton’s Rise, 7 February 2002

The Gatekeeper: A Memoir 
by Terry Eagleton.
Allen Lane, 178 pp., £9.99, January 2002, 0 7139 9590 4
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“... great deal about access to holy places. As a ten-year-old altar boy in a Carmelite convent, he had held the position of ‘gatekeeper’, so that whenever a novice took the veil and vanished behind the walls for good, it was the hand of a future Marxist literary theorist which opened, then fatefully closed, the portals. As the title of his memoir ...”

Dear Prudence

Martin Daunton: The pension crisis, 19 February 2004

Banking on Death or, Investing in Life: The History and Future of Pensions 
by Robin Blackburn.
Verso, 550 pp., £15, July 2002, 9781859844090
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“... to support as many family members as possible, at the expense of productivity. Early modern states held that the elderly were the responsibility of their relations. In England, the Poor Law of 1601 stated that ‘the father and grandfather, mother and grandmother and children of every poor, old, blind, lame and impotent person, or other poor person not able to ...”

Diary

Fintan O’Toole: The Case of Darren Graham, 6 September 2007

“... officials; an offer from the president of the GAA to have Darren Graham as his guest at a big game held at the association’s imposing main stadium in Dublin; an eventual apology from the Fermanagh GAA, leading to Graham’s decision to return to the game. Somewhere behind the coverage, though, there was a sense of something not being said. Colm Bradley, a ...”

Chasing Steel

Ian Jack: Scotland’s Ferry Fiasco, 22 September 2022

“... threatens to rise even further under Liz Truss), so this should be easy enough. But the SNP has held power in Scotland for fifteen years and has its own list of embarrassments, notably in the areas of public health, education and industrial policy. Compared to low life expectancy, the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe and the near total foreign ...”

Paths to Restitution

Jeremy Harding: Leopold’s Legacy, 5 June 2025

“... Near the end of his life, dogged by criticism of the Free State, Leopold destroyed many papers held at the International African Association, a propaganda organisation created in Brussels in the 1870s to press his claims in central Africa. But there is still a mass of documents to re-examine at the museum – on at least three kilometres of shelving – in ...”

We Are Many

Tom Crewe: In the Corbyn Camp, 11 August 2016

“... of the high-profile economists they signed up as advisers in 2015, including Thomas Piketty and David Blanchflower (who tweeted ‘he has no economic policies’). Corbyn’s former policy chief, Neale Coleman, who was often described as the most effective member of his team, has now been announced as a top adviser to his opponent in the leadership ...”

No Ordinary Law

Stephen Sedley: Constitution-Makers, 5 June 2008

“... envisaged both by Article 53 of the convention and by Section 11 of the Human Rights Act itself. David Cameron advocates replacement of the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights and responsibilities entrenched against repeal. Gordon Brown advocates a new constitutional document ‘in parallel’, as the recent green paper puts it, with a bill of rights and ...”

Good History

Christopher Hill, 5 March 1981

After the Reformation: Essays in Honour of J.H. Hexter 
edited by Barbara Malament.
Manchester, 363 pp., £17.95, December 1980, 0 7190 0805 0
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Puritans and Adventurers 
by T.H. Breen.
Oxford, 270 pp., £10, October 1980, 0 19 502728 0
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On History 
by Fernand Braudel, translated by Sarah Matthews.
Weidenfeld, 226 pp., £10.95, January 1981, 0 297 77880 3
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Sociology and History 
by Peter Burke.
Allen and Unwin, 116 pp., £6.95, August 1980, 0 19 502728 0
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“... before men had a word for it. How indeed could they have a word for it until it had happened? David Underdown, one of the five big names contributing to this festschrift, has a characteristically wise survey of ‘Community and Class’ in the English Revolution. Disregarding Hexter’s prohibitions, he concludes: ‘The Marxist model of local political ...”

Diary

Helen Sullivan: Trapped in the Mine, 6 March 2025

“... danger. It was then that we suspected the police were involved.’ The men were afraid. They held meetings, trying to work out what to do. They still had supplies of toothpaste, vinegar and salt, and mixed these with the water that dripped from the rocks.For weeks, they had no contact with the surface world. Then, in early November, pamphlets headed ...”