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“... in Bilbao asking him to ‘FIND JESSICA MITFORD AND PERSUADE HER TO RETURN.’ Mitford was made a ward of court and nearly lured onto a British destroyer (which would have whisked her back to England) by the handsome captain’s offer of roast chicken and chocolate cake. Sister Nancy and her husband also turned up, courtesy of the British Navy, and tried to ...”

“... their ninth child, announced that he was Paul McCartney and that his moods controlled the weather. Peter, their tenth child, said that he was a secret agent who worked for Queen Elizabeth. Brian, their fourth child, seemed well enough until, aged 22, he shot and killed his girlfriend, then himself. None of the Galvin siblings knew that Brian had been ...”

“... Southampton. Moses is travelling on the 46 bus from Westbourne Park to Waterloo to meet his latest ward, ‘vex with himself that his heart so soft that he always doing something for somebody and nobody ever doing anything for him’.Moses has begun to internalise the racism he has suffered. On the 46, when he ‘sit down and pay his fare he take out a white ...”

“... meeting at Columbia Psychiatric Institute is now legendary. Solomon was being wheeled through the ward as he emerged from an insulin-shock coma. ‘Who are you?’ he asked Ginsberg. ‘I’m Prince Myshkin,’ said Ginsberg. ‘I’m Kirilov,’ Solomon replied. Most of Ginsberg’s poetry of this period isn’t particularly interesting, but it illustrates ...”

“... him, cutting off his extremities like a bullfighter, and spitting out mouthfuls of his blood to ward off vengeful ghosts. Later Medea agrees to a hasty consummation of their ‘marriage’ so she won’t be forced to return. They try to make the best of it. The Fleece is laid out for them, nymphs do the flower-arranging and Orpheus leads the hymns. But even ...”

“... of a common Russian sensibility such as Tolstoy had imagined in his dancing scene’. Since Peter the Great, however, this ‘common Russian sensibility’ always contained a European admixture, and Figes criticises those – Rilke, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf – who swallowed whole the myth of a completely indigenous ‘Russian soul’. All the great ...”

“... John Huston’s Beat the Devil. He, too, is ruthless and unsmiling, and finding Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Robert Morley cast up on his shores, plans to have them all shot. Bogart, however, discovers the sheikh’s soft spot, a secret passion for Rita Hayworth, and saves their lives by promising the humourless young man an introduction to ‘the ...”

“... doing and her desiring at the same time. It would create, as David Trinidad is quoted as saying in Peter Steinberg’s introduction, ‘a movie of her life’. Still, in the end, we must take a point of view. The penultimate line of the chronology reads: ‘11 February 1963: Protects children then dies by suicide.’ It is revealing, that textual arm around ...”

“... slightly anti-semitic”. I am reminded of that wise physician, Sir Adolph Abrahams, who, on his ward-rounds at Westminster, forbade medical students to utter the word “slightly”. “Either a woman is pregnant or not pregnant,” he would say. “She cannot be slightly pregnant, boy.” ’ I have two objections to this argument. First, Sir Adolph is ...”

“... but her behaviour became increasingly unhappy and in October 1945 Frame entered the psychiatric ward of Dunedin Hospital. ‘I felt suddenly free of all worry, cared for. I could think of nothing more desirable than lying in bed sheltered and warm.’ Clinical staff told Frame there was nothing wrong with her, and that her mother could come to pick her ...”

“... of enslaving the imperial soul – the indignity and perplexity is captured with good humour by Peter Reading: I used to pepper my poetics with sophisticated allusions to dear Opera and divine Art (one was constantly reminded of A. du C. Dubreuil’s libretto for Piccinni’s Iphigenia in Tauris; one was constantly reminded of Niccolo di Bartolomeo da ...”

“... acquires a cactus, which is about as exciting as those scrambled eggs: ‘I had a cactus on the ward. It did nothing. It did nothing in a really big way. It was inert even for a cactus, and cacti aren’t the most entertaining of plants.’ Which takes us back to John rolling his snot: ‘The privilege of my situation, in which boredom lay so close to ...”

“... Captain’s Log (‘with Graham Clark’) and Blue Grit by Glasgow Rangers’ John Brown (‘with Peter Watson’). Would Brown reveal some juicy Gazza tales or give us the dirt on Graeme Souness? Not a chance. Gascoigne is not mentioned (perhaps he arrived too late) and as for Souness: ‘I haven’t got a bad word to say about Graeme. I don’t know if he ...”

“... effects of policy-wonking on circulation. He became a management consultant, author and adviser to Peter Mandelson. Living on Thin Air is, for the most part, a celebration of hip and chaotic capitalism. It is written in the regulation giddy style that Thomas Frank and the Baffler school in Chicago have dissected so well. Once again we are presented with the ...”

“... convenience: ‘restaurants, theatre tickets’. Larsen was born in Chicago in 1891. Her father, Peter Walker, was Black and came from the Danish West Indies; her mother, Marie, was a white Danish immigrant. Walker disappeared soon after Nella’s birth. Her mother then married a fellow Danish immigrant who never accepted his mixed-race stepdaughter. Nella ...”