Enrichissez-Vous!

R.W. Johnson, 20 October 1994

“... examined their own interests a little more thoughtfully they would surely be delighted at this self-inflicted paralysis on the part of the Government. But one of the most heartening sides of the new South Africa is the lack of such cynicism: people of all races and persuasions, even the most reactionary, want the new government to work. Yet the fact is ...”

In the Châtelet

Jeremy Harding, 20 April 1995

François Villon: Complete Poems 
edited by Barbara Sargent-Bauer.
Toronto, 346 pp., £42, January 1995, 0 8020 2946 9
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Basil Bunting: Complete Poems 
edited by Richard Caddel.
Oxford, 226 pp., £10.99, September 1994, 0 19 282282 9
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“... in the hope of winning was a tiresome affair and the woes of the poet show as much exasperation as self-pity. Occasionally they are played for laughs in the spirit of the good clown (‘le bon follastre’), one of the ways Villon imagined he would be remembered, whereupon complaint gives way to bathos. In the inscription, he urges a commemorative verse to be ...”

Glaswegians

Andrew O’Hagan, 11 May 1995

“... like at the end of his days.’ Charlie was probably shadowed a little by Beef, his gamely young self: he was no stranger to the world he lived in. But family life seemed to have him in its grip; it reformed him; it placed him in a new relation to his surroundings – he was a father, and a husband who loved his wife – and the old temptations must have ...”

My Mad Captains

Frank Kermode, 20 October 1994

“... was a full-scale dock strike. He was calm but disappointed. Later, sharing with me a moment of self-reproach, he said he regretted not having ‘winged’ one of them. ‘Then the rest would have pretty quickly toed the line.’ He had been in similar situations before. He went back on board and I followed. I explained to the officer of the watch that I ...”

Doctor in the Dock

Stephen Sedley, 20 October 1994

Medical Negligence 
edited by Michael Powers and Nigel Harris.
Butterworth, 1188 pp., £155, July 1994, 0 406 00452 8
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“... observing the clash of opposites is historically sanctioned in common law systems, but it is not self-evident. Other legal systems function without obvious injustice by giving the court itself a proactive and investigative role in which the parties are listened to but the witnesses are the court’s and the procedure is a function of the court’s ...”

Diary

Perry Anderson: In Seoul, 17 October 1996

“... of outside powers than its rival across the border. In its decline, indeed, this has become a self-defeating isolation. ‘If autonomy in a positive sense must entail power to do what one wishes and needs to for oneself,’ Paik has drily observed, ‘North Korea must surely be rated as one of the more hampered societies in the present ...”

The View from Poklonnaya Gora

John Lloyd, 3 October 1996

Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis 
by Timothy Colton.
Harvard, 958 pp., £25.95, January 1996, 0 674 58741 3
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“... on the energy and assumed benignity of Mayor Luzhkov. Colton writes: ‘Governments with self-control and orderly procedures will be worth influencing: today’s jerry-built and corruptible structures often are not.’ Colton’s is a model narrative. A city emerges from it, at once vital and deeply damaged, more at the mercy of ideologues and ...”

Tantrums

C.K. Stead, 22 February 1996

Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont and Fanny Imlay Godwin 
edited by Marion Kingston Stocking.
Johns Hopkins, 704 pp., £45, May 1995, 0 8018 4633 1
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“... year I hope to gain in value. This was the fine clear spirit which Byron, in his unworthy and self-serving exchanges with his fawning friend Hoppner, would describe as Claire’s ‘insolence’. Shelley and his household now left England for the last time. In April they were in Milan and Claire was persuaded the time had come for Allegra to be sent, in ...”

The Cruiser

Christopher Hitchens, 22 February 1996

On the Eve of the Millennium: The Future of Democracy through an Age of Unreason 
by Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Free Press, 168 pp., £7.99, February 1996, 0 02 874094 7
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“... know hawk from handsaw?) Why need we wait three hundred years for the vindication of a judgment so self-evident in the present? On other matters, O’Brien is not even this temperate. He worries about the future of Britain without a Crown and says, in full chiliastic mode but with a shorter time-line, that ‘I doubt whether the monarchy can survive until the ...”

A Snack before I Die

James Wood, 21 August 1997

Anton Chekhov: A Life 
by Donald Rayfield.
HarperCollins, 674 pp., £25, June 1997, 0 00 255503 4
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“... and country.” That’s the way of it.’ Father Christopher is offering no comfort at all; he is self-involved. He is speaking his mind, literally. He speaks in the same apparently arbitrary manner as the boy thinks. This use of stream of consciousness would, in later years, become the basis of Chekhov’s innovation in stagecraft. But it is also his ...”

Boxing the City

Gaby Wood, 31 July 1997

Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell 
by Deborah Solomon.
Cape, 426 pp., £25, June 1997, 0 224 04242 4
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“... boxes. ‘I’m tired of this one,’ she said. ‘Can I have another?’ Cornell, who was usually self-paralysingly sensitive to criticism, calmly wandered off to exchange her box. Some critics have suggested that he started making his shadow boxes to amuse Robert, or that he was influenced by the miniaturised life of Robert’s train set. Deborah Solomon ...”

Only in the Balkans

Misha Glenny: The Balkans Imagined, 29 April 1999

Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination 
by Vesna Goldsworthy.
Yale, 254 pp., £19.95, May 1998, 0 300 07312 7
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Imagining the Balkans 
by Maria Todorova.
Oxford, 270 pp., £35, June 1997, 9780195087505
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“... historic rights (based on the territorial zenith of the medieval Balkan states) nor issues of self-determination were, in the final account, instrumental in delineating frontiers. At the very most, these elements shaped the controversial and incompatible Balkan irredentist programmes. The size, shape, stages of growth, even the very existence of the ...”

Diary

John Lloyd: The Russian reformers’ new party, 15 July 1999

“... ladies in faded print dresses. There were several quite senior Army and Navy officers, smart and self-conscious in their dress uniforms. An old man sitting beside me in the gallery looked sternly at my notebook, then asked if I was a Western reporter. When I said I was, he began to talk about his enthusiasm for Pravoye Delo, but added that there were ‘too ...”

On and off the High Road

Tim Parks: Anglomania in Europe, 27 May 1999

Voltaire's Coconuts 
by Ian Buruma.
Weidenfeld, 326 pp., £18.99, March 1999, 0 297 64312 6
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“... languages makes it possible for translators to find solutions to hitherto insoluble problems seems self-evident. How could translations into Italian of English novels be the same after Manzoni had written I promessi sposi? How could one not draw on Eliot for a translation of the French Symbolists? Freshly arrived in England, Voltaire much enjoyed an afternoon ...”
A Les Trósors Retrouvós de la ‘Revue des deux Mondes’ 
edited by Jeanne Causse and Bruno de Cessole.
Maisonneuve, 582 pp., frs 185, January 1999, 2 7068 1353 9
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La Guerre d’Algórie par les Documents. Vol. II: Les Portes de la Guerre, 10 Mars 1946 à 31 Dócembre 1954 
edited by Jean-Charles Jauffret.
Service Historique de l’Armóe de Terre, 1023 pp., September 1998, 2 86323 113 8
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De Gaulle et L’Algóerie: Mon Tómoinage 1960-62 
by Jean Morin.
Albin Michel, 387 pp., frs 140, January 1999, 2 226 10672 3
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“... responsibility. A referendum, asking the French and Algerian populations to approve the policy of self-determination, was fixed for 8 January 1961. This was to be followed by the creation of an Algerian executive council and of other bodies to advise on a whole series of important issues. A ceasefire would be announced at the same time and would be matched ...”