“... to share kick-backs from the illegal sale of goods from prize ships. In his lifetime he saw the English state transformed from monarchy to Commonwealth and back again, and the English Church sway from extreme Puritanism to near Catholicism. He seemed always to be in the right place at the right time: he was there for the ...”

“... of morality, and often features vivid characterisations of the disreputable side of 18th cent. English life.’ But the quotations cited in support of this definition seem to tell a different story. They include a letter of 1829 by Charles Lamb, in which he speaks of ‘true broad Hogarthian fun’, and an essay by Carlyle of 1837: ‘There is nothing more ...”

“... will have to become multilingual. Membership of the EU has been an easy ride in the sense that English is its main language of business and exchange. You can get by with English in most European cities. But monolingual English will be a problem if people want to interact more ...”

“... landscape of bleak buildings and biting winds. More shocking still was the existence of a white English peasantry; the ‘arrivants’ (to borrow Kamau Brathwaite’s term) didn’t know that there would be slums in England, or that the slums would be where they had to live. Johnson was enrolled in Tulse Hill School, a large comprehensive for boys. Despite ...”

“... of Americans and himself a US citizen until his 39th year – being mistaken for the cousin of an English country squire. At times, often with a gleam of self-mockery, he confessed to social snobbery, indeed rather relished it: ‘One does feel a Swell leaving by sleeping car & walking up and down the station platform in a dinner jacket.’ This and other ...”

“... with Metaphysical poetry a lowness of esteem which now seems puzzling. As the Cyclopaedia of English Literature explained in 1844, Marvel ‘is better known as a prose writer than a poet, and is still more celebrated as a patriotic member of parliament’. Benson rejected those priorities. He saw Marvell’s political involvement as a cause not for pride ...”

“... barefoot or otherwise. I then went to see K. B. McFarlane. My special subject in Schools was Richard II so I had been to McFarlane’s lectures on the Lollard Knights; I also had a copy of some notes on his 1953 Ford Lectures that was passed down from year to year in Exeter. I knew of his austere reputation and of his reluctance to publish from David ...”

“... Schurman began her Latin tract on Women’s Aptitude for Knowledge and Higher Learning (or, as the English translation subtitled it ‘Whether a Maid may be a Scholar?’) of 1641 by acknowledging that ‘few are fortunate to have parents who either want or are able to educate them themselves.’ On his deathbed, Van Schurman’s father, her first ...”

“... and Memoirs – had covers easily recognisable as ‘SF art’. The jackets were designed by Richard Powers, whose unmistakable paintings were usually found on Ballantine mass-market paperbacks by Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simak and others. Powers’s designs screamed of the ‘paraliterary’, of druggy, trippy, sci-fi – just the boy’s ...”

“... of ‘crimes against taste’. David Lodge made him a twee subject of nostalgic research for the English hero of Small World, Philip Swallow, hopelessly outgunned by the vulgar but irresistible American, Morris Zapp. Lodge had got his significant detail wrong – Swallow should be a scholar of Charles Lamb (the ‘gentle-hearted’) – but the broad ...”

“... point here: The term ‘outsider art’ was coined by the art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for ‘art brut’ (‘raw art’ or ‘rough art’), a label created by the French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates. While ...”

“... Stanford University, I was given the chance to spend a year in the Creative Writing Program in the English Department. I was not at all convinced that creative writing could be taught in the classroom, but I felt I could do with a year’s time to think and write. For two afternoons each week I and about ten of my fellow students would gather for two hours in ...”

“... is. And how far from being resolved, or even fully articulated. Henry Louis Gates, professor of English and chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, has been one of the most articulate commentators on the subject. His first scholarly interest was the recovery and editing of ‘lost’ and ignored texts, primarily slave narratives. By way of his ...”

“... in some ways rather proper, had a taste for the risqué: his literary adviser in the early days, Richard Le Gallienne, poetaster, philanderer and drinker, had an instinct for the mood of the times. The Bodley Head rapidly became a succès de scandale as well as modestly profitable for some years. Aubrey Beardsley and Charles Ricketts were among the ...”

“... with a knife. The boys turned and ran back outside.   ‘Are you well?’ the man asked in English. Mona flies back to Albuquerque, and goes straight from the airport to the trailer where her husband has been waiting for her. He sat on the edge of the bed. On the table his outfit was ready and waiting. ‘Let me see it.’ I handed him the ...”