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“... as singing before private audiences and racing chariots. The fire, however, changed everything. Anthony Barrett, who has written several acclaimed studies of Julio-Claudians, invokes the parallel of the Chernobyl disaster, ‘a single event … so spectacularly disastrous that it proved fatal for the governing regime’. Nero never overcame the shame ...”

“... gambit paid off. Trump filled Scalia’s seat with Justice Neil Gorsuch. Soon after, Justice Anthony Kennedy retired. At 81, Kennedy was older than a Supreme Court judge should be; but he wasn’t ill (and is still alive). Nevertheless, he decided that President Trump and the Republican Senate were the ones he wanted to nominate and confirm his ...”

“... him’. Creating an imaginary fresco of King Candaules awaiting his wife on the nuptial couch, Anthony Powell observes that the expectant monarch has in him ‘something of all men’, his spouse absorbed in her own rituals ‘something of all women’. In the legend, Candaules dies for thinking his wife’s nakedness belongs exclusively to him, to show ...”

“... a classical epic in 12 books, a ‘novel-poem’ to rival his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, a historical romance to challenge Scott, an urban realist fiction to emulate Dickens or Balzac, a religio-philosophical-aesthetic treatise in the modern vein of the Higher Criticism. From the 1830s he had been a dedicated ...”

“... economist, inventor, reformer of scientific institutions, craftsman, even salon host. But Anthony Hyman does not seek to displace the computers from centre-stage in Babbage’s life, and this seems correct. They provide the most sustained theme in his variegated career, and may be seen as a point of convergence for most of the tendencies of his ...”

“... litigator once told me that his strategy was to ‘shut Antonin Scalia up long enough to get Anthony Kennedy on my side’.)The composition of the Supreme Court determines the path of the country. It is therefore unsurprising that appointments to the court are politically contentious. (The Trump administration displayed a rare competence in the ruthless ...”

“... by the end of the 16th century was for buffoonery: he was turned into a jest-book figure, and in Anthony Munday’s Robin Hood play within a play, The Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, a ‘real-life’ Skelton takes the role of Friar Tuck. His recovery came on the back of the rise of Modernism, with its opening of readers’ minds to new ...”

“... schoolteacher that he instinctively joined in the Hail Marys when watching the film Amar, Akbar, Anthony, causing his father to freak out. He describes his father as shouting in ‘our’ language Vut idiot! If you vunt to call on Gud, call anytime on anyvun of our ten gurus . . . Now, where do the inverted commas around ‘our’ come from? Surely not ...”

“... What must Dylan make of this meaningless buzz? Robert Browning wrote to Elizabeth Barrett that he had never lacked ‘a real set of good hearty praisers’: ‘No – what I laughed at in my “gentle audience” is a sad trick the real admirers have of admiring at the wrong place – enough to make an apostle swear. That does make me savage ...”

“... lying. Mandy Rice-Davies later wrote that her testimony in the Ward case had been untrue. Vicky Barrett, a prostitute who had described Ward as a conventional pimp, did the same. Of the two books, An Affair of State is the more polished and convincing. Honeytrap, in some sections an admirable piece of sleuthing, gets diverted into loose speculation. Summers ...”

“... of Hunky Dory consists of pastiches of Bowie’s musical heroes of the 1960s – John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Anthony Newley, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground. Which would make Ziggy Stardust the beautiful butterfly that emerged from the chrysalis. Paul Trynka begins his biography with a description of Bowie’s performance ...”

“... Judy’s turn … [cry?] …) Victory is sweet, even if glimpsed from afar. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Sunday denied a request from Proposition 8 supporters to halt the issuance of same-sex marriage licences in California. Dozens of same-sex weddings have taken place in the state since Friday, following the Supreme Court’s decision on ...”

“... can choose from a huge selection of books on any given cult figure (Nick Drake, Gram Parsons, Syd Barrett etc). In the days when such figures were active you had to be satisfied with an occasional music-press annual, or the lyrics printed in your girlfriend’s Jackie, or, if you were really lucky, a title like The Sociology of Riff (no photos or ...”