“... of the Dogme95 manifesto. ‘Today a technological storm is raging,’ he and his cosignatory Thomas Vinterberg wrote, ‘the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the medium becomes, the more important the avant-garde.’ The manifesto contained a vow of ...”

“... the neglected men I have found Robert Bage, Henry Brooke, John Bunyan, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Delaney [sic], Emanuel Ford, William Godwin, Richard Graves, Robert Greene, Robert Henryson, Charles Johnstone, Charles Lever, M.G. Lewis, Thomas Lodge, Henry MacKenzie [sic], ...”

“... the second part of a superb and definitive biography, and by these studies of Edward Gibbon, Thomas Babington Macaulay and John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, pioneer volumes in Weidenfeld and Nicolson’s new ‘Historians on Historians’ series. As their resonant names suggest, these men were the very antithesis of poor, cloistered, threadbare ...”

“... and informative, although some of the history is shaky. For example, Goodrich attempts to connect Thomas More’s defence of ecclesiastical interpretative prerogative to Edward Coke’s similar claims for legal expertise, without apparently being aware that More’s own concept of law was essentially transparent. In contrast to matters divine, More desired ...”

“... which introduces a functional analysis of the central section of Stravinsky’s In Memoriam Dylan Thomas. The index to this material occupies a further four and a half pages, and contains such fascinating entries as ‘sadism, Webern’s in-turned’. The book is generally superlative in tone, and Keller’s fondness for verbal inflation leads him down some ...”

“... eleven million cars a year and had just overtaken its deadly rival Toyota as the most popular car brand in the world.The head to head with Toyota was at the core of what was to be VW’s disaster. As the 21st century went on, it became increasingly clear that everybody in the fossil fuel business had to start thinking about ways of getting into clean, or at a ...”

“... patrician anticlericalism which distinguished his more progressive – because freethinking – brand of conservatism from what he perceived as the type of right-wingery that might lapse all too easily into a fascistic authoritarianism. Trevor-Roper’s very individual and historically informed reading of politics is one of the running themes of his letters ...”

“... Celtic protest, just as it did in the late 19th century. What is new, however, is the Thatcherite brand of radicalism which has also worked to divide. The BBC, previously the purveyor of a truly nationwide public culture, has been systematically undermined. The Civil Service, formerly a component of the powerful myth of British official impartiality and ...”

“... curiously, only 21 are included here) have been compared by Robert Nye to the poems written by Thomas Hardy after the death of his wife, and by Jonathan Raban to In Memoriam. The subject is a precarious one for poetry, and Dunn has not always succeeded in avoiding the pitfalls. Poems like ‘Dining’ and ‘Arrangements’ are dangerously direct; Dunn’s ...”

“... stage further, for his subject, Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), constitutes a major obstacle to his brand of revisionism. Was black reaction in the marrow of Unionism from the very start? After all, Castlereagh, one of the architects of the British-Irish Union of 1800, later played a directing part in the Tory regime which, in the years immediately following ...”

“... Prescott when he punched a demonstrator, suggests something of this tautological quality. This brand of liberty is not in principle opposed to authority, not least because without its minatory presence it would have nothing to grumble about. Even so, it keeps a wary eye on the potential insolence of power. It is peaceable but nonconformist. English freedom ...”

“... Representatives, which means that the often mentioned potential for Trump to poison the national brand is grossly exaggerated. The source of Republican national power is Republican local power, which will be hard to shake until after the 2020 census, no matter how badly they behave. In Wisconsin, the Republican trifecta has allowed the party over the last ...”

“... and gives the novel a starred review, praising its ‘charming’ recombination of the styles of Thomas Pynchon and Boris Vian and its ‘tender’, ‘childlike’ depiction of heterosexual love. Jack figures the Kirkus reviewer must be a woman, probably studying French, unduly influenced by Will’s touched-up author photo. Then comes a review in the New ...”

“... a nation’. Most young nations carry false birth certificates, either some teleologically-twisted brand of history which proves that Slobodnian independence was the inevitable outcome of the dialectics of progress, or else – and not infrequently – literal forgeries. Look at the Libuse manuscripts, forged by a 19th-century Prague archivist to prove that a ...”

“... Hollinghurst’s fondness for triads of the adjective-adjective-noun kind, on the model of Thomas Gray’s ‘mute inglorious Milton’. Nothing is more lyrically English than this smooth cluster, and Hollinghurst’s ability to spool these triplets throughout the book is marvellous. But they appear so often that they begin to act ...”