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“... his own report on the extermination at My Lai and sending it to Congress. He told me that, poor white boy as he was (he left school at 14 and was drafted without protest), he had been in basic training when, in the hut one night, a group of good ol’ boys had decided to have some fun with the only black soldier in the detail. The scheme was to castrate ...”

“... Christopher Andersen’s book begins, as it should, with the prodigal, the violent, the gross. But what do you expect? Madonna’s wedding was different from other people’s. The plans were made in secrecy, and backed by armed force. ‘Even the caterer ... was kept in the dark until the last minute.’ You also, you may protest, have been to weddings where the caterer has seemed to be taken by surprise ...”

“... which contain representations of these ‘monstrous races’; and some Medieval lives of St Christopher describe him as belonging to the Dog-Heads (Erasmus, on the other hand, suggested, tongue in cheek, that he was a Cyclops). These Medieval images of the monstrous races have in their turn fascinated modern scholars. However, as J.B. Friedman ...”

“... not because it’s Mexican,’ yelled Angel in Carlos Fuentes’s magnificent dystopia, Christopher Unborn. We may be on dodgy ground, then, lumping together two Mexican novels – one about the South American uprising of 1810 and one about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain at the end of the 15th century – but for the fact that both try to ...”

“... him in the leg. He staggers, he spreads his wings; later that morning, three people see a great white swan circling the village. Much of my time with Jacob Polley’s latest book of poems was spent deciding whether Jackself was a boy or a bird. In the course of a few lines in ‘Jack Snipe’, a stocky wader becomes a teenager heeling off his ...”

“... who has hitched a ride with two men, a wool trader called Kuzmichov, and a priest called Father Christopher. (Rayfield tells us that the young Chekhov made a similar trip, on a trader’s cart.) As they leave the boy’s home village, at the start of the journey, they pass the cemetery in which his father and his grandmother are buried. Chekhov’s ...”

“... caught, in collusion with the Mafia, plotting to poison Fidel Castro’s cigars. Ronald Reagan’s White House was run to astrological time, and its chief spent his evenings discussing Armageddon theology with strangers. Oliver North recruited convicted narcotics smugglers to run the secret war against Nicaragua. George Bush recruited Manuel Noriega to the ...”

“... father) though I do not wish to wish these thingsFrom the wide window towards the granite shoreThe white sails still fly seaward, seaward flyingUnbroken wingsLennard writes:‘Ash-Wednesday’ ends with the plea ‘Suffer me not to be separated/ /And let my cry come unto Thee.’; and that cry is ‘(Bless me father)’. The lunulae enabled Eliot to record and ...”

“... like to think about. Among other things, Richard is a lightning conductor for the worries a white European novelist might have in trying to dramatise the lives of African refugees. Clueless about geography, and given to consulting Herodotus, he draws up an almost childlike list of questions and decides to interview the Oranienplatz protesters out of a ...”

“... life to the random and endless shopping lists catalogued in his numerous logbooks: ‘a blue and white china pap-cup; a poisoned dart in red bag; a pilgrim bottle; a pair of spectacles in a brass case; another pair of large round spectacles; some wooden scales; a skeleton warrior; a broken, painted thermometer ’. Wellcome himself is absent from much of ...”

“... of a brawler, and an admirer of the 1950s Bollywood siren Madhubala. Now, Haj Suleyman wore a white pirahan and had a beard you could lose your fist in. He personally delivered the call to prayer from the neighbouring mosque. He twinkled roguishly and I was reminded of Agha in Kuche-ye ma, who stops shaving when the Taliban arrive and ends up making his ...”

“... has gone unheeded, for he is back again, almost as good as new, in a parallel-text translation by Christopher Pilling. These translations are a labour of love: heroically complete, decorously literal and slightly awkward. So much depends, in Corbière, on a recklessness that expresses itself in the twisting and hammering of poetic form. Among recent ...”

“... as roving ambassadors, made weapons. The best known and most influential African poet in English, Christopher Okigbo, joined the Biafran army. He was a romantic, unsatisfied with the administrative or diplomatic roles his fellow intellectuals took on; Chinua Achebe, his close friend, describes him as a man about whom there was a certain inevitability of drama ...”

“... that destructive ‘restoration’ – stripping everything off – was initiated by the men in white coats against the advice of the men in bow ties. And it has to be admitted that such destruction was often the responsibility of much-vaunted scientific techniques and remedies. A few medieval effigies in this country have been damaged by dilettante vicars ...”

“... the United States has shown more sensible and decent inclinations than Europe, as over Bosnia, the White House has failed to evolve and stick to a consistent policy, leaving an impression of bungling vacillation. In one area, however, the Administration has not only claimed credit for success but has sometimes been awarded it; astonishingly enough, that area ...”