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“... It attached even to his private writings, notably his surviving letters to Robert Harley, soon to be secretary of state and eventually unofficial prime minister. Harley rescued Defoe from Newgate, after he was convicted of seditious libel. He wanted to use him, and gave him a heady sense of influence over ...”

“... thus salutes a distinguished predecessor. Yet there is nothing particularly Wordsworthian about Andrew Motion’s book. The only character who uses the expression ‘in the blood’ is the poet’s father, and what he means is that when the time comes Andrew is bound to enjoy hunting. There is little evidence here of ...”

“... Fidel Castro, alas’ one would have to answer if asked what 20th-century Latin American had cut the largest figure in the world. The best short account of the cultural reasons for lamentation is G. Cabrera Infante’s ‘Bites from the Bearded Crocodile’ (LRB, 4-17 June 1981). The economic and social reasons for being less than enthusiastic are set out in the leaden pages of Jorge Dominguez’s Cuba: Order and Revolution of 1970: it is worth bearing in mind that the present state of the Cuban economy can only be sustained by the receipt of something like half of all Soviet aid to the so-called Third World ...”

“... him to various other forms of secrecy’. He was to become a government spy when Robert Harley was Lord High Treasurer (effectively Prime Minister) and he uses the word ‘secret’ obsessively in Crusoe (it occurs five times on one page). Novak sees his experience of prison and the survival strategies to which it led as crucial to his ...”

“... it isn’t. On the day in question, the key witness was a shop assistant from a pharmacy near Harley Street where one of the accused, Arafat Waheed Khan, had been caught shopping on CCTV. He appeared to have bought four 500 ml glass jars at £38 a piece. That this wasn’t big news, or particularly illegal, explains why on this occasion the daily PA ...”

“... expert in land reclamation who cannot grasp the urgency in any other matter. Miranda’s brother Andrew is an officer in the British Army; and Miranda’s heart is given to a young Republican, a student of philosophy and protégé of her father’s, a boy from a social class lower than her own. An old Nanny is about the place to supply comfort and common ...”

“... There were also in the school boys who were against these principles. The son of a rich Italian Harley Street doctor extolled Mussolini. Leftism and pacifism swelled an organisation called the United Front of Progressive Forces, known all over the school as Uffpuff. There were, I am sure, leftists who were not fellow-travellers, but I wasn’t one of ...”