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“... serious issues are at stake. It was a serious matter when the Sunday Telegraph accused Mr Jack Hayward, a successful businessman, of being involved in a criminal conspiracy to murder Norman Scott, the friend of the Rt Hon. Jeremy Thorpe MP. It was a serious matter when a book by David Irving was read as suggesting that Captain Broome RN, the commander ...”

“... army invaded Britain, and followed it in 1905 with The Invasion of 1910, this time with jack-booted Prussians as the aggressors. This was serialised in the Daily Mail by Lord Northcliffe, who was much exercised by the German Peril. Even the Northcliffe boys’ papers ran a series of ‘Britain Invaded’ stories; the doomed youth of Britain were ...”

“... since ‘Diana Week’ in London – a sea of red and white English flags, with hardly a Union Jack to be seen – confirmed that the St George’s Cross had become the flag of the heart for millions of English families, a symbol of allegiance which had spread far beyond the football stadiums. The future of this particular nationalism – whether it will ...”

“... North. ‘Here are some things Charlie said were in short supply.’ The girl (Sissy Spacek) fixes Jack Lemmon with a pitying look. ‘Not any more,’ she says. The scarcities, like everything else, were politically conditioned.In one way, this strangulation of Chilean democracy was a jewel in the crown of those successful Washington-inspired military coups ...”

“... as when he justly praises John Updike. He is full of gratitude to literary editors, commemorating Ian Hamilton’s work on the New Review in terms only this side of idolatry. Such writers and editors do the work he wants to help with – they keep going some intelligent conversation about books. Raban has neatly stitched together autobiographical commentary ...”

“... in many ways the most accomplished piece. In mid-Fifties Cumberland the carefully-named Jack Spade lords it over his small household, enchanting his grandson and being unrelievedly cruel to his wife. Murray is unafraid of sentiment, and has a practised eye for the totemic value that can be placed on the most mundane of objects – a box of coloured ...”

“... as to say that it comes off best in fiction of this length, and that Fay Weldon’s talent, like Ian McEwan’s, has been somewhat frustrated or diverted by there being so few current outlets for the ambitious short-story writer. Keith Waterhouse’s new novel adds another to his gallery of engaging social inadequates like Jubb and Billy Fisher. It also ...”

“... the Cape on that traumatic Sunday afternoon, Englishmen were left disoriented and bewildered. Even Jack Rowell, the stoic manager of the England team, had his senses scattered in the wake of the All Blacks’ crushing victory in the World Cup semi-final. There were no tears or hard-luck stories as there had been when England’s footballers were beaten by ...”

“... his drug profits. The only character nastier than Tony Curran is the owner of Coopers Chase, Ian Ventham, a prime suspect in Curran’s murder until he winds up dead himself (this isn’t really a spoiler: you can see it coming a mile off). The killings seem to be connected to plans to expand Coopers Chase, which would involve digging up a graveyard ...”

“... independence.Such nonsense! It’s still humiliating that anyone accepted that bedtime story. As Ian Patel writes in We’re Here because You Were There, decolonisation ‘was from a British perspective uncontrollable, unwanted and unexpected. Direct imperial rule was dissolved largely in two currents of anti-colonial nationalism in Asia in the 1940s and in ...”

“... was so small it couldn’t be measured. Same with dance music in the heyday of the dance bands: Jack Payne, Henry Hall and Ambrose were all tuneful and popular; the more rarified Fred Elizalde at the Savoy was so disliked that he had to be dropped from the rota. And for the first time, as far as I know, a history of pre-war radio pays serious attention to ...”

“... spread for an encyclopedic mind like Keenan’s to reference (he is well known as a rock critic). Ian Curtis seems to have been the model for the band’s lead singer, Lucas Black, whose brain condition results in short-term memory loss, hence his copious written notes. The people around Black are either hopelessly attracted to his ‘endearing combination ...”

“... and for once had not cooked any of it. Then she bought a plastic policeman’s hat and a Union Jack flag on a stick and had a picture taken in front of Big Ben for 50p. When she arrived home at 7 p.m. the police were waiting, called by her panicked eldest daughter. They suspected Emecheta had been at a boyfriend’s house and questioned the absconding ...”

“... of masculine implosion have been concerned with redemption (Alasdair Gray’s 1982, Janine, Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time), while others (like Fawlty Towers and several of Martin Amis’s novels) are satisfied with their central character’s disintegration. What is odd about Fullalove is that collapse is its anti-hero’s point of departure as well ...”

“... support for Palestinians in the London press came from the romantic Tory Spectator, then edited by Ian Gilmour.Hecht was born in 1894 on the Lower East Side to immigrant parents from the Pale of Settlement (in what is today Belarus). When he was ten, the family moved to Racine in Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan. They weren’t very devout and he had ...”