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“... Thirties. That the League of Nations ever came about after 1918 was very much the doing of Woodrow Wilson, and it was as an emissary to Wilson while the war was still on that Bergson had his unlikely moment of high political involvement. Early in 1917, he was chosen by the Government of Aristide Briand to go to Washington ...”

“... Soon after​ Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, a book called The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace was published, describing one New Jersey man’s dual existence as a top student at Yale and an incorrigible drug dealer.1 Peace was an alarmingly precocious black boy whose mother toiled in hospital kitchens to raise the money to send him to parochial schools, where he thrived ...”

“... and there. What does a less good translation look like? This version of the same poem, by Graeme Wilson, is entitled ‘Enchanted Graveyard’: From the direction of the viewing stand Come faintly tepid, stanked saltwater smells. The willows shimmy in the wind. Where else, As slugs crawl up, black gland on glistening gland, The moon-sharp hedge, could such a ...”

“... a seat on Lambeth Council. I had worked for two magazines considered left-wing – Tribune, under Michael Foot, and the New Statesman, under Paul Johnson. It was a different world. In those distant days, Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister. He was being assailed by ‘left-wingers’, people like me, for being too ...”

“... the manuscript seems merely pious, pretty aimless otherwise. The same goes for the title. Edmund Wilson called the book – Fitzgerald had completed 17 out of 30 projected chapters – The Last Tycoon, and Graham later said she thought Fitzgerald would have preferred this. At the time he was playing with the idea of The Love of the Last Tycoon: A ...”

“... and introduce a thoroughgoing parliamentary system. On the way, the essays discuss Edmund Wilson, the Oz books, V.S. Pritchett, Hollywood, Theodore Roosevelt and various other topics and people. Perhaps the best way to get a sense of what Vidal is up to is to look at the title essay. This is a piece in heroic bad taste, full of swash and buckle, and ...”

“... or just ‘Hailsham’. No one, after all, would dream of writing a biography of, say, Harold Wilson and calling it ‘Lord Wilson’ because deep down we know that was all a hollow sham. But Lewis clearly feels that Hogg is, well, lordly. In a sense this hits the nail on the head, and not just because he was twice ...”

“... and he and his supporters had been cast into outer darkness. Then the pendulum swung again. Harold Wilson, now back in office, sought, after a period of mainly bogus ‘renegotiation’, endorsement in a referendum of Britain’s continued membership of the European Community. Roy Jenkins led the all-party ‘Britain in Europe’ campaign, and achieved what he ...”

“... Labour Party as the opposite of the Conservatives. On the contrary, many of them saw the party of Wilson and Callaghan, and even the party of Michael Foot, as (in the old Trotskyist phrase) ‘Labour lieutenants of the capitalist class’. Those members of the staff who did not share this view were castigated as traitors to ...”

“... of hostile bankers, businessmen, judges and media moguls ‘blew them off course’, as Harold Wilson put it. When the Tories are in office, all those bankers and businessmen and judges are their friends. There’s no need or inclination to blow them off course. Then suddenly comes Norman Lamont’s shock claim, greeted by prolonged and fervent ...”

“... she was being literal as well as figurative. A pen was what she wrote with. Dan Jacobson’s and Michael Frayn’s reliance on, respectively, a word processor and a tape recorder needn’t be put down to Post-Modern self-consciousness. Novels naturally like to keep up with the technology on which they rely, but an appeal – however disingenuous – to ...”

“... When he came to write his autobiography, the biographer Michael Holroyd decided to restrict himself to what he calls ‘a good walk-on part’, assigning the leading roles to his family. Avowedly happier with the lives of others than with his own, he remains as close as the circumstance permits to the condition of invisible watcher ...”

“... days: in doing so, they also throw a good deal of unintentional light on the reasons for its fall. Michael Stewart and Douglas Jay were both awarded Firsts at Oxford in the Twenties, entered Labour politics in the Thirties, held junior office in the Attlee Government in the Forties, supported Gaitskell in the battles of the Fifties and were appointed to ...”

“... last joke in 1988 when she made an appearance on Aspel and Company, the ITV chat show hosted by Michael Aspel, one of a handful of Alan Partridgesque men who for decades had a monopoly on interviewing film stars on British TV. Taylor had recently completed her second stint at the Betty Ford Centre, where she was treated for alcoholism and other addictions ...”

“... problem has been worked out, there’s not often much point in going back over it – as Edmund Wilson almost said, who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd afterwards – but good examples of the form have other attractions. They usually seem to owe their durability to elements in them that are gratuitous, strictly speaking. The sleuths don’t really need all ...”