“... honeysuckle along the back wall or hanging tasteful Indian friezes in a four-storeyed St John’s Wood mansion are the pursuits of reactionaries and manipulative control freaks. The cosmetic is opposed to the ethical. In Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, the only way for Rosie to convey her hatred for her ‘crude, vicious, racist and ignorant’ father – a former ...”

“... indignant at the haemorrhage of jobs and skills, chart the progress of disindustrialisation. Ian Jack’s Before the Oil Ran Out and Robert Chesshyre’s The Return of a Native Reporter are fine examples: picking over the debris of the factory system, they find their pathos in the spectacle of ghost towns. And then there is the literature on ...”

“... on white-owned farms being washed away by the rain. He became fond of the country, then run by Ian Smith’s white minority government in defiance of the rest of the world, including its former colonial master, Britain, and considers Smith’s Rhodesia a great agricultural success story. By that time the war between black nationalist fighters seeking ...”

“... the flutter of opinion, bound to the steady metre of walks and excursions and friendships.MILLER: Ian Hamilton was against my saying so, but I feel there was something good there from time to time, in Spender. Like that poem about the aeroplane …HEANEY: ‘The Landscape Near an Aerodrome’.MILLER: That’s right.O’HAGAN: About the plane descending to the ...”

“... ratio at two to one, and make sure that native detachments developed no common identity. Charles Wood, secretary of state for India under Palmerston, made no bones about the objective: ‘I wish to have a different and rival spirit in different regiments, so that Sikh might fire into Hindoo, Goorkha into either, without any scruple in case of need.’ ‘As ...”

“... for the rest of the Civil War – indeed even through the rise of Leveller agitation in 1647? Ian Gentles has suggested that Presbyterian strength was based on a combination of the wealthier tradesmen and the poorest layers of porters, watermen and sailors, in which apprentices from the more substantial guilds acted as a shock-force, against an ...”

“... I’m not sure these evidences are volunteered with an eye to their vulgarity, and there is an Ian Fleming-like knowingness about him – the best place to stay, the shop to buy shirts etc. Bellow’s presentation of vulgarity itself vulgar? But maybe I’m missing something here and it’s all part of Bellow’s take on Bloom. In the past it’s ...”

“... digital effects like Gladiator’s, only more so. It has a proper cast, with proper stars in it: Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Liv Tyler as Arwen Undómiel (the women’s parts have been beefed up somewhat). An acquaintance e-mailed to say he’d seen an early trailer in a cinema. He was so moved by the glorious sight, he cried.On the ...”

“... to warrant a build-blocking dig. Naturalists rummaged for protected animals. They found pheasants, wood pigeons, collared doves, wrens, blackbirds, blue tits, great tits, carrion crows, starlings and reed buntings; they found four badger setts, without badgers in residence, which they recommended sealing off. No evidence of bat activity, or of great crested ...”

“... binding, ivory it was said, a baptism gift to ‘Jeremy’ and signed by the composer Haydn Wood – a friend of Colin’s parents, I suppose – who’d written the popular tune ‘Roses of Picardy’ in 1916. Above his signature, he’d copied out a few bars from the refrain, along with the words by Fred Weatherly. Maureen always kept a beady eye on ...”

“... and the Pips, Charles Trenet, Ska Almighty, John Dowland, the organ music of Johann Fux (heh heh), Ian Bostridge, the Ramones, Astor Piazzola, Ethel Merman’s Disco Album, Magnetic Fields, Flagstad and Svanholm in Die Walküre, Lord Kitchener and the Calypso All-Stars, Sonic Youth, Youssou N’Dour, tons of the Arditti Quartet, Kurt Cobain, Suzy Solidor, John ...”