“... names – their dim faces snuffed flames. A poet who could write such lines so early, in what may have been good health, didn’t have to change her style much (though she tried, by writing prose poems) when she, or her parents, got sick. Nor did she have to learn from scratch about midlife: another poem from Wild Brides proposes To go to the door of the ...”

“... declared, people would undoubtedly address a boy wearing such a jacket as ‘Buttons’. He may well have been thinking of Buttons the page in the pantomime version of Cinderella. In America, too, the pages or ‘call boys’ whose instant availability was crucial to the smooth functioning of office block, luxury hotel and legislative chamber alike ...”

“... a restlessness about them, the relentless unseriousness of the classroom joker. A spy thriller may seem very different territory from her previous shows, domestic comedies which delighted in the everyday oddities and hypocrisies encountered by her young female protagonists. But it isn’t tradecraft and global criminal machinations that interest her so ...”

“... man, less cocksure and more wary, wanting to do some good and make a difference, but afraid it may be too late. The Friends of Harry Perkins traces his rise from the backbenches to the brink of Downing Street. The time frame for this is deliberately confusing. As Mullin tells us in his preface, the new book is set in a future that overlaps with the recent ...”

“... Netizens of Douban (a major website forum where people rate and discuss books, movies and music) may remember that during the PRC’s 70th anniversary celebrations in 2019, some ‘patriot’ groups (‘melon group’ and ‘big ship group’) got overexcited and started to ‘couple’ Chinese leaders. Practised at dodging censorship, they used ...”

“... have come of them. According to Alex Egbona, a member of the House of Representatives, as of last May only two were anywhere near completion. In August last year, Timipre Sylva, the minister for petroleum resources, said that ‘we have licensed quite a bit.’ He was ‘not in a position to give an exact figure now’ but was confident that ‘a few of these ...”

“... kicking the Community out, rather than bringing them their post and picking up their rubbish?This may seem like nit-picking, but it is a natural response to Cook’s conspicuous efforts at world-building, and specifically her attempts to forestall any objections the reader might have. Agnes can’t ‘coo’ into an imaginary mirror without an ...”

“... Doom fashioned himself ‘the rocket scientist with the pocket wine list’, and although he may be done conducting his mysterious experiments, I refuse to believe the song is over. His ‘transition’ is just another ‘biochemical equation’ (the title of a song he made with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA). He will reconstitute in some other form, just as he ...”

“... the first two books. These characters tend to be men, and they’re frequently misogynists. They may never share a page, much less a room.But they cover a lot of ground. Across three fragments appearing over thirty pages in Nocilla Experience, a doctor called Harold, who has suffered a breakdown after a divorce, spends three and a half years losing at tennis ...”

“... It seems that he doesn’t intend to retire to his palace any time soon. But playing the long game may not be the best strategy: a sizeable proportion of the protesters have been in their twenties or teens – people born and raised entirely under Putin’s rule, for whom the spectre of chaos the Kremlin so often invokes is less fearsome than a future of ...”

“... response to the Eastern Europeans’ understandable desire for cheap jabs).Von der Leyen may not have been so perfect, after all. Like many commission figures she is a national has-been. Once considered a potential successor to Merkel as chancellor (and candidate for the German presidency), she became marginal a decade ago. Postwar German politicians ...”

“... a protective chapel ‘evokes sanctuary in a paradoxical, self-cancelling form’. The connection may seem far-fetched, but Gawain raises questions about the meaning of sanctuary vis-à-vis the natural world. Like the miracle of the stag, it asks whether human institutions such as kingship, covenant and sanctuary can extend their reach into the realm of ...”

“... of Funding, which draws its members from the Palestinian arts community and cultural NGOs. On 28 May, in the single most serious episode of this affair, the rooms where the group was due to exhibit were raided and defaced with cryptic death threats, including the number 187, which is sometimes used in the US to refer to murder. A month after the opening, the ...”

“... Barrett can be when he gives his characters permission to cut loose. Rory, Eustace and Bimbo may have ‘bloodshot eyes, pouched necks and capitulating hairlines’, but there’s a big difference between them and most of the other characters in this collection: ‘the Alps still felt young in their ...”

“... and on the limitations of the written word in articulating practical knowledge. Her title may seem at first to prioritise language, but in the end her book demonstrates its inadequacy. She admits that we must accept ‘approximating concepts and terms’: ‘skill’, ‘Kunst’, ‘cunning’, ‘working knowledge’ and ‘artisanal ...”