“... and this is because there is in the British literary climate something of that ‘philistinism’ Donald Davie says was characteristic of the Movement: ‘We would not entertain for a moment the idea that poetry could be, in some degree, or from some points of view, a self-justifying activity.’ Why should it be that, insofar as it’s possible to abstract ...”

“... side, immortalised in 2000 in a video that showed him sashaying in matronly drag and preening for Donald Trump like a cross between Barbara Cartland and a funeral bouquet, a grotesque flirtation that proved prophetic. These two were fated to be mated. As the courtier, roving fixer and tireless mouthpiece for the Burger King of Palm Beach, Giuliani would ...”

“... and John Updike. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was first serialised in the magazine. ‘I only read it for the articles,’ joked subscribers, of which there were more than a million by the end of the decade. A lifetime’s supply cost $150, and the first issue would be hand-delivered by a Playmate. In 1960, in an article for the Architects’ Journal ...”

“... he said. He became politically active campaigning for Brexit. In a lull in our conversation he read aloud the Bible inscriptions etched on the ceiling. ‘I’m not terribly religious, but the past, the present and the future should all be taken into account,’ he told me. I was happy to chat. I had time to kill: my online application for a press pass had ...”

“... or burlap) inserted carefully behind it, blending colours and textures. It’s tempting to read into these shapes, to see nuptials in the veils, cruelty in the hoops that cleave to the material like corsets, and more so when you consider the phrases Mayer jotted on her drawings or in her notebooks: ‘a cracked egg’; ‘paint dripping thru broken ...”

“... not. Often, batsmen have eyesight that the rest of us do not. David Gower, in his twenties, could read the maker’s name on a mirror. But keen eyesight isn’t enough: to handle fast bowling you need experience of it. Photographers can use lenses to enhance their own eyesight, but as Eagar says, you’ve got to know what you’re hoping to take a photograph ...”

“... regulation or other, consciously or otherwise, or taking advantage of an illegality by others. Donald Thomas’s book reminds a reader that had he been a retired colonel living in Brighton in 1942, and invited an actress from London down for the weekend, he could have been smartly fined and threatened with imprisonment next time. The reason? The coastal ...”

“... besides being one of the most influential, novels of this century. Mr Hamilton simply takes it as read. All that he tells us is that it was originally written in German, that it was translated into English by Daphne Hardy, an English sculptress who was living with Koestler at the time, that she invented its English title, that it enjoyed a great success in ...”

“... Garry Trudeau has put it into Doonesbury. Street vendors in Washington are selling buttons that read ‘I am not Anonymous.’ Primary Colors, the funny, literate and juicy roman à clef about the 1992 Democratic Presidential primary campaign, featuring an ambitious, visionary, greedy, gregarious and womanising Southern governor named Jack Stanton, seen ...”

“... early ones anyway – are now so well established as an ironic commentary on pop culture that they read as decoration, as conventional and period-flavoured in their way as chintz.* The general effect of the show is cool and spacious. You could be in a fashion store which has decided to go retro and jazz up the decor. To see more than decorative wit you must ...”

“... negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix’ positively bounced with energy when put beside Donald Davie sitting wrapped in his overcoat beside the fire saying Heigh-ho on a winter afternoon. It was possible then to see Ginsberg, Kerouac and their friends as anarchists articulating and exemplifying a morality that flouted the values of liberal Western ...”

“... virtues of the new economic history. I am prepared to wager that this chapter proves the least read section of the two volumes. An excursion into another area of economic theory, by S.Howson, leads the author, while discussing the inter-war slump, to devote some paragraphs to the topic of whether all unemployment should be considered voluntary. At least ...”

“... Writing a BBC Third Programme review of Donald Hall’s Penguin Contemporary American Poetry exactly a month before she killed herself early in 1963, Sylvia Plath praised ‘the inwardness of these images ... the uncanny faculty of melting through the leaves of the wallpaper, through the dark looking-glass, into a world which one can only call surrealist and irrational ...”

“... wife to any husband. The book, though physically attractive and lavishly illustrated, is a hard read. What is it that keeps one going through a long sequence of letters with their arbitrary reference to time and place and their detailed personal content? Usually their literary value and/or narrative arrangement. Vera Stravinsky’s letters have more of the ...”

“... was hardly concerned with Frank Richards as a novelist or (despite his essay’s title) the art of Donald McGill. A better reason for paying attention to humble work is to identify its virtues. At worst, this can become highbrow slumming – overpraising incompetence like an eager nursery teacher or a too-democratic exponent of ‘community arts’. Yet, when ...”