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“... long afterwards the producer died suddenly and that was that. The scarlet Woolsack, described by John Wells as ‘a sofa sacred to the law’, plays a sit-on part throughout this book. Though periodically restuffed with Commonwealth wool, it retains all the ‘ritual magic’ of medieval days. During the Gordon Riots of 1780 it was the holy refuge on which ...”

“... principles’. The illustrative quotations reinforced this emphasis: ‘The term Whig,’ Lord John Russell said in the 1850s, ‘has the convenience of expressing in one syllable what Conservative Liberal expresses in seven.’ The entry ranged widely over the (mainly pejorative) extensions of the core use, including such delights, now lost, as ...”

“... In a neglected passage in The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell unapologetically writes: A priori knowledge is not all of the logical kind we have been hitherto considering. Perhaps the most important example of non-logical a priori knowledge is knowledge as to ethical value ... We judge, for example, that happiness is more desirable than misery, knowledge than ignorance, goodwill than hatred, and so on ...”

“... house. Half a century later prints of pastoral subjects after Stubbs and pastel portraits by John Russell became collectors’ items, as did, soon after, quaint 17th-century samplers and, in due course, Chinese paintings made for export. The ‘surprising and surprised birds’ may even have been plates by Audubon, whose work was then regarded ...”

“... philosophy and been effective public spokesmen for the secular and liberal causes of their day. John Stuart Mill was one such, and Bertrand Russell another. In our own time, the latest and perhaps the last of this chain of great figures has been Sir Alfred Ayer. Ayer shares with ...”

“... War, because strong language – like strong drink – is a way to alleviate despair. In 1930, John Brophy and Eric Partridge published a collection of British songs and slang from the war. They claimed that soldiers used the word ‘fucking’ so often that it was merely a warning ‘that a noun is coming’. In a normal situation, swear words are used ...”

“... and a Parliament no more than a necessary rubber stamp to confirm its conclusions. To a man like John Selden, on the other hand, the notion of a ‘representative kirk’ could do little more than make him cry ‘Praemunire’: to the English, whether Presbyterian or not, the Scottish notion of a General Assembly appeared an entirely unwarrantable ...”

“... and satisfy the clearly mixed ‘feelings evoked in us by this telling of losses and gains. In Russell Hoban’s previous, much-admired novel, Riddley Walker, the narrator, ‘connection man’ for a Kent settlement far in the future which lies beyond some obscure cataclysm, agonises in his residual English about the problem of writing. ‘I dont have ...”

“... harassment works (and is recommended even to, or perhaps especially to, people who don’t like Russell Crowe: he doesn’t impersonate the Fox CEO Roger Ailes so much as turn into him). McBurney’s Murdoch is, like the real one, an unusual combination of direct and evasive. Logan Roy is more straightforward. When asked why he’s confident his children ...”

“... illustrations. The texture of a rug, or the light from a candle, become lessons in transcription. Russell Hoban has evoked a world where objects have a wistful, disjointed existence in which they strive for animal vitality. There is something of Hans Andersen’s melancholy, but something, too, of the tougher world of Hoban’s own The Mouse and His Child. He ...”

“... renaissance, is also concerned with what might have been, and with a legend which has run from Sir John Holles to S.R. Gardiner. He shows Henry as heir to the aspirations of the Sidney circle, a patron of the arts, and a champion of the Protestant cause. Whether the English financial system would have permitted Henry as king to have championed the Protestant ...”

“... is suddenly dubbed ‘an unregenerate southern redneck who stopped just short of the Klan and the John Birch Society’. The evidence to support these latter insinuations is non-existent. It must be obvious by now that the staff of Elvisly Yours, for all their sad unscramblable venality and potty devotion, have right on their side. This is a sick book, its ...”

“... quite recaptured this touch till Vera (1921), which describes her second marriage, to Francis Russell. This book made his brother, Bertrand Russell, decide to warn his children never to marry a novelist. Elizabeth published 22 novels and lived in 35 different houses, leaving a mass of papers, letters and diaries. They ...”

“... consisting at different times of Kingsley Amis, Bernard Levin, Robert Conquest, Anthony Powell, Russell Lewis and assorted others, and calling itself with heavy and definite self-mockery ‘Bertorelli’s Blackshirts’. The conversational scheme was simple (I think it had evolved from a once-famous letter to the Times defending Lyndon Johnson’s war in ...”

“... which includes excellent semi-technical short books on, among others, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Russell, Freud, Piaget and Chomsky. The author, who lectures in the Department of Psychology at the University of Oxford, writes from first-hand expert knowledge of experimental work in animal behaviour and the relevance of experiments on animals to human ...”