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“... between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’. Jones misses the power of what the blogger Alex Williams has defined as ‘negative solidarity’ inside a demoralised, struggling and stratified proletariat. A blunt example: in the 1990s, when my father was working shifts as a sheet-metal worker, he loved to watch Harry Enfield, particularly the characters ...”

“... on a courtesy visit to the USSR, as it then was, in 1988, a party which included Craig Raine, Paul Bailey and Timothy Mo. I don’t remember laughing more on any trip before or since; we were a very silly group, so much so that we often mystified our hosts and sometimes behaved disgracefully. Sue – and I even noticed this in the photo the Guardian used ...”

“... consistent contrarianism can produce odd outcomes. Surely Hitchens is not going to go the way of Paul Johnson, one of the leading attack-journalists (and New Statesman stalwarts) of a previous generation, now reduced to indiscriminate barking at all things ‘fashionable’, while intoning pas d’ennemis à droite? As it happens, I’ve been rereading ...”

“... however, to give up the case or its nefarious methods. It managed to secure a precedent when James Williams, a Portsmouth bookseller, was tried for selling cheap reproductions of satires by Hone, and sentenced to a heavy fine and a year’s imprisonment. Hone discovered that Williams, a strong supporter of the ...”

“... detailed surgical map of his insides.* ‘Adam’ was a convicted murderer – Joseph Paul Jernigan, executed (by barbiturate poisoning) in Texas in 1993 – who donated his body to science. His bizarre, semi-eternal preservation represents the apotheosis of the displayed, reified, specular body of exploratory, scientific epistemology (the website ...”

“... There’s the hardboiled prison yarn (school of Papillon); the sentimental education (Emlyn Williams with attitude); the Brideshead years (revised by Will Self); Kensington decadence (‘We threw a disgustingly lavish party ... The food was limited to caviar and foie gras, the drink to Stolichnaya and Dom Perignon ... Peter Whitehead married Dido ...”

“... but more sentimental too, while the 20th-century work is respectable but minor (Vaughan Williams, Howells). So the forms of the tradition have outlived the certainties that founded them, which, Josipovici would add, might also be a definition of the contemporary conventional novel – one of his frustrations. In search of a craft literature from ...”

“... retreat in Maui, 17 retired rich people convene, among them George Soros, Ted Turner, Ross Perot, Paul Newman and the TV host Phil Donahue, as well as men who made their fortunes in less familiar ways: Jeno Paulucci (frozen vegetables), Max Palevsky (computer software), Sol Price (big-box retailing), Barry Diller (mass media) and Bill Gates Sr (corporate ...”

“... Maureen Duffy. His sleep must have been poisoned for years by worries about properly dating Piers Paul Read’s A Married Man. It is, in fact, a disaster to fill a book like this with storms of names and endless lists; narrative gets shouted down by the encyclopedic. But there are many valuable discussions: Stevenson shows that much postwar fiction was ...”

“... regarding his serial disappointments in love – compounded decades later, when Valerie Wynne-Williams, the third and last of his deep romantic attachments, and 39 years younger, suddenly married. But illness was also retrenchment. It drew a line under his vacillating attempts to fit in with the expectations of others, which were replaced by a ...”

“... needed now – by more than a few readers with a special interest in him or his times? Raymond Williams advised Patrick Parrinder against reading the novels in the winter, as ‘a tactful and tolerant supervisor solicitous about my emotional health’, as Parrinder puts it. Scandal and an absolutely efflorescent unhappiness are to be found beneath the ...”

“... When she describes historical events, however, Feinstein keeps calm. In her account of Tsar Paul’s overthrow in 1799 (the year of Pushkin’s birth) in favour of his son Alexander, her tone is neutral. Alexander had apparently been assured that no harm would come to his father but ‘in the event’ Paul happened to ...”

“... witness. So, undoubtedly, will Hugh Thomas, who contributes a rather slapdash opening chapter, and Paul Johnson, who writes far more cogently on ‘The British Left, Trade Unions and Democracy’. But their findings, like those of Butler and Marquand, have been overtaken and confirmed by subsequent events. The Labour Party’s Black-pool and Wembley ...”

“... a small aesthetic triumph at the top of several streets of grey English houses. Built by Paul Monaghan of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, it is green-panelled, transparent, a bright uplifting sentence in the worn story of the street. Inside, a group of GPs were discussing preventative measures against heart disease. Other doctors and support staff were ...”

“... won ten pennants and nine World Series. His big rival as a hitter was Boston’s scientific Ted Williams, who hit .406 in DiMaggio’s Streak season, the last person to hit .400 in a season. ‘Sure he can hit,’ Joe said. ‘But he never won a thing.’ The Streak, the marriage to Monroe, the reference in the Simon and Garfunkel song (‘Where have you ...”