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I can’t, I can’t

Anne Diebel: Edel v. the Rest, 21 November 2013

Monopolising the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship 
by Michael Anesko.
Stanford, 280 pp., £30.50, March 2012, 978 0 8047 6932 7
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... was usually dismissive of inquiring scholars, he liked Edel’s professional manner (‘quite unknown; very meticulous’) and granted him permission to quote from James’s dramatic materials, and to compile an edition of the plays. Years later Edel gloated about the moment when, all alone with the vast and virgin James family archive, he copied some ...

Opportunity Costs

Edward Luttwak: ‘The Bombing War’, 21 November 2013

The Bombing War: Europe 1939-45 
by Richard Overy.
Allen Lane, 852 pp., £30, September 2013, 978 0 7139 9561 9
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... In closing, Churchill warned against the treachery of calculations that cannot include the great unknown variable of the enemy’s reaction. If Churchill had written nothing else, this memo alone would prove his strategic talent, and his fortitude, for in September 1941 there were no better plans than Portal’s: the US was not at war and might never be, the ...

Diary

Will Self: On the Common, 25 February 2010

... Minute for the next decade. By contrast, my wife grew up in a household where radio was virtually unknown while the television was switched on in the morning and remained that way for the balance of the day. When we first got together she found my radio listening at once absurd and bizarre. ‘How on earth did they invent it,’ she once quipped, ‘did Logie ...

How to Defect

Isabel Hilton: North Korea, 10 June 2010

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea 
by Barbara Demick.
Granta, 314 pp., £14.99, February 2010, 978 1 84708 014 1
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... It has been facing food shortages at least since the early 1990s, and is experiencing a famine of unknown severity … the economy has collapsed around agriculture … The two primary fertilisers used in North Korea, urea and ammonium sulphate, are both petroleum-based, and shortages of petroleum feedstocks have adversely affected domestic production of ...

I myself detest all Modern Art

Anne Diebel: Scofield Thayer, 9 April 2015

The Tortured Life of Scofield Thayer 
by James Dempsey.
Florida, 240 pp., £32.50, February 2014, 978 0 8130 4926 7
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... and electrical wiring’; he believed his attempts to buy paintings were being thwarted by unknown persons of great wealth; and he had his water tested for typhoid bacteria. He did have legitimate fears: he had a long-standing feud with the art collector Albert Barnes, who threatened to expose him as ‘a pervert – and illustrate the story with ...

Like a Lullaby

Jenny Diski: Can you imagine dying?, 9 April 2015

... into an oh-so-considered sentence, it too does the work of the uncanny. The too well known as unknown. I fucking love clichés. Still, there is also the matter of just being accurate, taking the straightest route to the meaning you want. I am not on a journey, I repeat, testily. But as each of my treatments ended I found it grew harder to escape the ...

The lighthouse stares back

Matthew Bevis: Tóibín on Bishop, 7 January 2016

On Elizabeth Bishop 
by Colm Tóibín.
Princeton, 209 pp., £13.95, March 2015, 978 0 691 15411 4
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... young man, his eyes fixed on facts and minute details, sinking or sliding giddily off into the unknown.’ That giddiness is a pleasure as well as a predicament. In a postscript she adds: I went to see ‘O Processo’ – ‘The Trial’ – which is absolutely dreadful … in spite of the morbidity of Kafka etc. I like to remember that when he read his ...

The Last Intellectual

Rosemary Hill: The Queen Mother’s Letters, 6 December 2012

Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother 
edited by William Shawcross.
Macmillan, 666 pp., £25, October 2012, 978 0 230 75496 6
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... the will to engage with life through shattering bereavement, illness and social change on a scale unknown in living memory to any of her contemporaries, turned out to be a vital resource and not just for herself but for the royal family and so to some extent for Britain. The First World War broke out on her 14th birthday. At first it meant little more than ...

Make them go away

Neal Ascherson: Grossman’s Failure, 3 February 2011

To the End of the Land 
by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen.
Cape, 577 pp., £18.99, September 2010, 978 0 224 08999 9
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... with interior monologue, Grossman overdoes it. The reader is sprayed with mystifying allusions to unknown events which may only begin to make sense hundreds of pages into the book. Too much confusion in story telling, inner voices which aren’t always interesting, explanations too long deferred, can all test patience dangerously. To the End of the Land ...

He will need a raincoat

Blake Morrison: Fathers and Sons, 14 July 2016

The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between 
by Hisham Matar.
Viking, 276 pp., £14.99, June 2016, 978 0 670 92333 5
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... being such a good sport’ – and for still being around to receive the praise. It isn’t unknown for a son to pay tribute while his father is still alive – Roddy Doyle did it (to both parents) in Rory and Ita (2002) – but it’s usually death that provides the spur. All the things that went unspoken in his lifetime (‘Died before we’d done ...

Rogering in Merryland

Thomas Keymer: The Unspeakable Edmund Curll, 13 December 2007

Edmund Curll, Bookseller 
by Paul Baines and Pat Rogers.
Oxford, 388 pp., £30, January 2007, 978 0 19 927898 5
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... the Hint, and try how far he could run the Parallel.’ This versatile hack was the otherwise unknown Thomas Stretzer, whose signature survives on manuscript receipts acknowledging that Curll had given him ‘full Satisfaction for the sole right and title to the copy’ of both Merryland and Merryland Display’d. The satisfying sum involved is not ...

At the Polling Station in Kibera

Daniel Branch: The Elections in Kenya, 24 January 2008

... in, among other places, Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi. Any protests were dealt with ruthlessly. An unknown number of protesters were shot in Kisumu on 30 December as police opened fire on a crowd attempting to congregate in the city centre. There were pitched battles in Kibera and gunfire filled the night elsewhere in Nairobi during the first few days of ...

This Is Not That Place

Thomas Jones: David Eggers escapes from Sudan, 21 June 2007

What Is the What 
by Dave Eggers.
Hamish Hamilton, 475 pp., £18.99, June 2007, 978 0 241 14257 8
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... of boys: ‘Come to me, children! I am your mother! Come to me!’ Achak hangs back as ‘the unknown boys ran toward her . . . When they were twenty feet from her, the woman turned, lifted a gun from the grass, and with her eyes full of white, she shot the taller boy through the heart.’ Achak and Achor Achor turn and run, as the woman still calls ...

Blood on the Block

Maurice Keen: Henry IV, 5 June 2008

The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England’s Self-Made King 
by Ian Mortimer.
Vintage, 480 pp., £8.99, July 2008, 978 1 84413 529 5
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... in the Cottonian Collection, just readable under ultraviolet light, was a copy of a previously unknown declaration by Edward III of October 1376, strictly limiting the royal succession to his male heirs and their male descent. This declaration was never made public, and it was quite unclear that a king had any right to regulate the succession in this ...

New Model Criticism

Colin Burrow: Writing Under Cromwell, 19 June 2008

Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham 
by Blair Worden.
Oxford, 458 pp., December 2007, 978 0 19 923081 5
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... beyond the present moment, and imagine their readers abroad, in the future, in lands or times unknown, this kind of criticism can break down, or be reduced to seeking sedimentary layers of topicality in their composition, each of which must address and can only address its own time – which again should ideally mean a week or a month. Worden will no ...

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