“... this time in a more objectively historical context. Hamilton offers 22 case studies, from John Donne – the first properly biographed English author – to Philip Larkin of last month’s Observer fame. Hamilton could not, if he tried, write an unreadable book. Keepers of the Flame is that rarest of modern things, lit crit with laughs. Hamilton has ...”

“... In 1851 the trade referred its dispute to a tribunal headed by the author and judge Lord John Campbell. His decision was delivered on 19 May 1852 and published in its entirety by the triumphant Times. Campbell came down uncompromisingly for free trade. The Regulations, they said, were indefensible, and contrary to the freedom which ought to prevail ...”

“... Tipped up inside the gleaming room Her wet hair streamed into the sink, Warm water shed its snorkeled bloom Onto her raw, responsive nape; Dead lathers left her in the pink, The bubbles made their charmed escape. The whole scene was detachable. Oatmeal and lemon, white and green, The towel fluffed on the cork-topped stool, The burst sachet, the malformed tube, The three sides of wet polythene That curtained the hygienic cube ...”

“... It might as well be gaslight now That soughs and pouches through the trees, Lost pockets of foxed sepia, The silver, pollen-haunted sneeze Of sunshine and magnesium Caught in the filter of her veil, Uplifted faces drained and dumb, Each smile a failing chemical That hovers in the nitrate’s mist Where moth-like cousins, lunar aunts In gauze and satin gloves persist Through acid-eaten radiance ...”

“... Psalm 139:23At one time,when there might have been a God,everything vaguelyconvent, dovesand serpents in the Treeof Knowledge, gospelwhispered down the galleriesof rain,I would have been awake for almostnothing in this perishable world,only a drift of rose, or cardamine,along the backroad home, wind in the trees,the angel half-revealed, improbable,lighting the hedge like a flamein the greenof morning ...”

“... entwined.           Our neighbour                           John who spends his free time diving plumbing the sea for evidence and spilt cargoes         who has burrowed in the mud to touch the mystery of something absolute         can tell you how                         out in the ...”

“... anywhere else, on our way to work, is a state it is very content for us to remain in. Somewhere in John Kampfner’s excellent book on Blair’s Wars, there is a quote I found more chilling in its smugness than anything else in the volume. It had Jack Straw saying to a journalist words to the effect that ‘It’s at times like this that the country needs ...”

“... Currie’s spectacular act of vengeance and indiscretion in regard to her four-year affair with John Major. A lot of coverage has been devoted to the question ‘what if we had known?’ But the main thing that would have been different is that people would have been denied the pleasure they feel at finding out about it now. The recent appearance of ...”

“... Weather drips quietly through the skeins in my diary. What surly elision is this? Who faxed the folks news of my homecoming, even unto the platform number? The majestic parlor car slides neatly into its berth, the doors fly open, and it’s Jean and Marcy and all the kids, waving pink plastic pinwheels, chomping on popcorn. Ngarrrh. You know I adore ceremony, even while refusing to stand on it, but this, this is too inane ...”

“... I tell myself I’m a minimalist. Not that it matters to the big guns who train their sights on us, who also know about tomorrow and their brothers, and had a pretty good run. It would be that time in the future, that was predicted. The wearing of boater hats had become fairly commonplace, like going to the park. Children ran errands while adults went to the movies ...”

“... NRS 125.330: Want of understanding. When either of the parties to a marriage for want of understanding shall be incapable of assenting thereto, the marriage shall be void from the time its nullity shall be declared by a court of competent authority. Conditions for the Dissolution of Marriage under the Nevada State Legislature When it no longer smells like an orchard standing all around me in the dark, the sense of a known Beloved that comes of garden work, the honey of a voice receding in my throat, my flesh less dream than sleep, an unrequited gap amidst the lanternlight that runs from tree to tree – when nothing on the air gives answer to that hollow in the bone from years ago, the wound I never tell, no scar to show by daylight, nothing Ancient in my house, or Perilous, when flocks of geese rise, month-long, from the fields and arc towards the north, I drown my vows and start again, one heartbeat at a time, till swallows map the lanes from spire to spire with mint and ozone, summering the dawn ...”

“... Quartz sparks randomly on the pink and white crust of the salt flats, spread out beyond the landing, where bags of grain – wheat and oats in plastic and hessian – lips sewn shut, packed tight, flexing dust and dragging their feet to the edge, are tipped onto the truck – feed- grain, filling out the flattop, another body sack waiting to be fed, from top to bottom, the sheep hollow-gutted in the long dry, green-feed deficient and this the diminishing stock of back-up tucker; the best paddocks up beyond the salt all hoofed and bitten, stray tufts targeted and levelled, dry roots crumbling and dropping to dried-out stream-beds beneath, so no new encrustations of salt emerge back down in the low places, just the old crust, pinking off – at night, the crazy pick-ups spinning wheels and throwing headlights, the bonnets rising and falling in choppy waves, the light as unstable as a camera and the darkness dropping in like black sacking; bleak rabbits dashing about, their blood infra, the forecast – hectic red ...”

“... From the interior night of the unconscionably tall, arched doorway, the shadows commence a faint unnerving undulation; they wear an awful sheen, as if the shade has been interminably brushed after being treated in some scenty new conditioner. The aperture takes on shape: the hard sway of a long, high neck, and the absurd tiny slope of what, in another creature, might have been its shoulders ...”

“... Head down on the desk, he hides tears that force their way out, warping ink of words he can’t read. Isoglosses: smudges of dialect, script across areas of page, title deeds to land his grandfather collated: blocks of mallee, caprock, breakaways, map the farm: vast cleared spaces, fencelines, patches of scrub, irrepressible cairns of rock picked when paddock-making, maintaining: each year upturning more relic-like granite, more history ...”

“... Love StorySamarkand never was, though there wereverses in the book that spokeof lacquerware and lapis lazuli,the beauty of our goods, delayed for monthsat Kandahar or Minsk, the horsesdreaming in the dark behindtheir blinkers, nightlongcaravans abroad beneath the sky.I stood out in the road, by Brewster’s Yard,and waited for a ghost, since ghosts were true,a pair of Clydesdales pressing to the fenceto listen: rain; the music of the spheres;or else, those calls I knew, from other worlds,the wind across the sands, a whimbrel’s cry ...”