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“... meanness’, or possibly the author doesn’t know what ‘mien’ means. By way of reply, Christopher picks up a brick. When he breaks through the window, Verity sprays him with insecticide. The affair ends. Rebounding from emptiness, Verity takes a job with the Drew Foundation, a body devoted to the enlightenment of underdeveloped countries on health ...”

“... a visit arranged by the Great Britain-USSR Society. My colleagues were the novelists Paul Bailey, Christopher Hope and Timothy Mo (who also writes for Boxing News), the poet Craig Raine (who doesn’t) and the playwright Sue Townsend of Adrian Mole fame. I had many misgivings about the trip, particularly in regard to creature comforts. I wondered, for ...”

“... aesthete who’s paid to serve as an ornament in corporate conference rooms. Is there hope for U? That’s not a question McCarthy seems interested in answering, or posing. But the outlook for his own enterprise looks all the better the more he puts the boot in. In one memorable sequence, Madison rouses herself and tells U the story of a David ...”

“... on the surface but with a note of desperation not quite concealed. Another South African novelist, Christopher Hope, told me recently that ‘the bookshelves are wet with South African tears’ and reminded me of an old novel by Kingsley Amis, in which a young seducer at a party takes a girl to the kitchen and makes her cry over South ...”

“... Which else would have been passed by! because it is too busy trying to see urinals as mosques. Christopher Hope’s poem Englishmen has the advantage of a subject other than the inside of the poet’s own head. Hogge, Owen, Mrs Oribi and Mr Silvero represent aspects of English settler life in South Africa. The first two are ‘mysterious ...”

“... of the kind that every professional politician is expected to commit, and for which he may hope for praise (‘a politician to his fingertips’). And there are small venalities, such as the trashy, lucrative lawsuit brought by Crossman and others against the Spectator. (The magazine had reported him drunk in Venice: the late Lord Goddard had a bias ...”

“... spat and crackled, Rock was it, or sea? A bad situation. So you take hold on the controls and hope; It is a ghostly moment when the engines quit; And everywhere there was a whispering, Which explains the blank looks on our faces. The first thought, of mom and dad Or little sister, soon forgot. No whiff Of pinewood. No warmth of Dairy Queen. We Feathered ...”

“... and Aer Lingus prizes when it came out last year, and the paperback carries glowing tributes from Christopher Hope and Paul Bailey. I don’t find myself reaching for superlatives like them, but it certainly isn’t any old first novel. Wartime Lies is a stylish and gripping account of how a Jewish boy and his beautiful, resourceful aunt manage to stay ...”

“... it had been the spineless Labourites all along. I have forgotten too much of the past to have any hope of repeating it, and think Santayana a windbag, but it still alarms me to see the United States embarking on a military journey without maps. ‘Guilty but Insane’ was Ian Gilmour’s heading for his Spectator review of Michael Foot and Mervyn Jones, whose ...”

“... Reset as an Arthurian idyll’. I don’t know whether Anon meant this as a parody of Tennyson; I hope not. If so, its maladroit ignorance ought to have ruled it out. Nobody who has read Tennyson could think that his verse ever moves like this: When one – some wondrous stately knight – Of our great Arthur’s ‘Table Round’; One, brave as ...”

“... just as the keys are the attribute of St Peter, and just as the child is also the attribute of St Christopher. This is why we find the child shown twice in paintings which include both the Virgin and Christopher. It also explains why in many polyptychs, especially in North Italy, the Virgin is painted holding the child in ...”

“... with a definite flavour of Modernism and Surrealism – cannot but prove the stronger. The pious hope that the writers’ individualities will somehow be sublimated into a pure, transcendent otherness is soon replaced by the knowledge that here we have, in typically Western form, what always comes about when so many poets gather – a quartet of vigorously ...”

“... Christopher, the new Columbus, is conceived on a beach at Acapulco at the beginning of 1992. Mexico’s overseas debt stands at $1492 billion, soon to rise to $1992 billion, and the Yucatan peninsula has been ceded to the Club Mediterranée in the vain hope of paying the interest ...”

“... John paid homage to Philip II at Le Goulet in 1200’ – and he must have enjoyed expressing his hope that it would ‘not be necessary for Her Majesty’s stay at Sandringham to be interrupted by her in person having to prorogue Parliament’. Speaking the next day at a Women’s Institute meeting in West Newton village hall, however, the queen herself ...”

“... Christmas. He names the names: Simon Heffer of the Daily Mail, Andrew Pierce of the Daily Mail, Christopher Hope at the Daily Telegraph and Caroline Wheeler at the Sunday Express. He even quotes Heffer’s thank-you note: he found the hamper at home when he got in after ‘an arduous day killing pheasants’. The team at Vote Leave came to hate ...”