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“... can turn into an addiction. The connection between this and other kinds of abuse is something that Peter Rushforth has been thinking about for a long time. In 1979 he published his first novel, Kindergarten, a short and desolate work which won the Hawthornden Prize. A meditation on ‘Hansel and Gretel’, the grimmest of tales, Kindergarten describes a world ...”

“... of every sketch was people dying.’ Nonetheless, it was undoubtedly a strong influence on Peter Cook (one of the original cast members) and the other three-quarters of the Beyond the Fringe team (Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore), who would go on to present their own take on the nuclear threat, in a sketch called ‘Civil War’.In that ...”

“... made an abstract papiers collés binding for Blaise Cendrars’s book of poems, Pâques à New York, executed in front of the poet on 1 January 1913, and they collaborated again on another extraordinary ‘simultaneist’ book, La Prose du Transsibérien, published in October that same year. When its 22 accordion-like panels were unfolded, printed text and ...”

“... which put injustice in train than he can with the villains at their villainy. Rockaway, New York is where Woody Allen’s Radio Days is set: frame houses face the boardwalk, the boardwalk faces the beach. From Rockaway opens with four kids coming home from Prom Night. The limo driver goes on about ‘kids today’, which is what the book is about. Alex ...”

“... Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s catalogue of the 1932 exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art, famous for introducing the term ‘International Style’, assumed, in Johnson’s phrase, that Wright was ‘the greatest American architect of the 19th century’. This annoyed Wright, who was always looking forward, but when his ...”

“... Metropolis’ or a ‘Monopteral temple to enshrine a colossal statue of the late RH the Duke of York’, on the other. The first impression is that the Soanian imagination was allowed freest reign on paper. Yet his best thinking was occasioned by the need to solve difficult practical problems: the grandiose schemes, like the one for a triumphal bridge which ...”

“... Perhaps it is too soon to call this one of the greatest motion pictures of all time,’ the New York Times said in June 1942, ‘but it is certainly the finest yet made about the present war, and a most exalting tribute to the British.’ The film was Mrs Miniver, whose heroine had come from a 1939 bestseller by the British writer Jan Struther ...”

“... 13 January. One of Peter Cook’s jokes, several times quoted in his obituaries, is of two men chatting. ‘I’m writing a novel,’ says one, whereupon the other says: ‘Yes, neither am I.’ And of course it’s funny and has a point, except that Peter, I suspect, felt that this disposed of the matter entirely ...”

“... book recognise it in one way or another. Most, like the examples by Helen Garner, David Brooks, Peter Carey, Joan London, Kate Grenville, are admirably achieved on this basis, the authors all born in the Forties or Fifties; and the names indicate that the newer European immigrants have not yet found a voice in their new language. Particularly memorable is ...”

“... Karl had a poor view of Cordelia, as he liked to remind me. In the summer of 1979 the New York Review decided to launch a British version of itself and Karl was to be the editor. The Times and its empire, which included the TLS, had been off the streets since the beginning of the year as a result of its owners’ dispute with the unions and the idea ...”

“... of torrential male urine; of an audience, attired in deepest mourning for the deceased Duke of York, screeching with laughter at a pantomime; and of an awkward moment at court when, as George IV attempts to confer a knighthood, the sword sticks in its scabbard. Unexpectedly, the letters may be most valuable to students of the theatre and of spectacle. They ...”

“... anthems Hymn to St Cecilia (classy words by Auden, usefully decent treble solo)♪ and Hymn to St Peter (eerie plainsong effect, also with coveted treble solo opportunity).♪ In the cathedral, thrillingly at night, that enormous building dark and mysterious beyond our spotlit oasis, we thrashed our way through an evening performance of Noye’s ...”

“... it must be said, Wilson had, in the material sense, more to give. When Nabokov arrived in New York in 1940 he was virtually unknown outside émigré Russian circles, but Wilson had been for years an important critical voice, and had a well-deserved reputation as a defender and expositor of new writing. Axel’s Castle had long been famous; To the Finland ...”

“... of the widely-publicised troubles at the International PEN Congress held this January in New York may ironically have been the new timeliness which Norman Mailer’s outbursts bestowed on feminist consideration of masculinity, misogyny and writing. Mailer, president of PEN and chief organiser and fundraiser for the huge writers’ conference, shed his ...”

“... believe that a volume of Saki’s stories, chosen from eight miles of second-hand books in a New York store, saved his life. That, he says in his introduction to this collection, should not be confused with changing his life. Faced with a 22-city promotional tour of America for one of his books (‘Not, you might venture, a deathly predicament in and of ...”