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“... column now lies flat, supported on steel beams of its own, like an industrial version of the True Cross. (Last out of the site, it was the first thing in the 9/11 museum, which had to be constructed around the column owing to its size.) In this same semi-sacral register, there are also beams with little crosses and stars of David cut out by metalworkers for ...”

“... wondered at than its ultimate collapse. This was never, as historians have so often depicted it, a cross between the Napoleonic or Austro-Hungarian Empire and the great colonial empires of the 19th century. It never had, as Rome had had, and France and Britain were to acquire, a metropolitan centre which, for the coloniser if not always for the ...”

“... Outlandishly theatrical, well-wrought and witty, Middlepost is Anthony Sher’s first novel. The jacket illustration – Sher’s own work – sets the tone. It presumably depicts some of the novel’s characters, misshapen and naked as eels, rising up into the heat and dust. Inside are five suggestive line drawings by the same hand, the most notable of which is the frontispiece, ‘The Great Fish Vomiting out Jonah upon the Dry Land’, Jonah being one of the names which the central character of Middlepost might easily have contracted, given the number of times he is compared to that desolate hero ...”

“... film; Dennis Weaver’s incarnation of the crazy night man at the desert motel, a prefiguration of Anthony Perkins in Psycho and every other damaged person who ever had to look after a register and hand out keys (Welles writes in the memo of the ‘neurotic, scrabbling’ way Weaver walks, and says of the later part of his performance that it ‘is one of the ...”

“... For a long time​ Anthony Trollope was remembered as the civil servant who introduced the pillar box to Britain and wrote fiction in three-hour stints before breakfast, sitting in front of a clock to make sure he produced 250 words every 15 minutes. Most had heard of Barchester Towers, but few read it, and the rest was forgotten ...”

“... be found throughout the three books, and one of the advantages of having them all to hand is that cross-checking is so rewarding (all are well indexed). The general level of accuracy is high, as far as I can judge. The only serious mistake I have found is in Mullen, who on page 642 states that ‘within a few days of completing An Old Man’s Love Trollope ...”

“... one’s sitting on it. If I say, ‘I promise to loan you five pounds,’ but as the words cross my lips have no intention of doing so, I have still promised. The promising is built into the situation. It is not a ghostly impulse in my skull. Authors can say the silliest things about their own stuff, which is one way in which they resemble critics. The ...”

“... by right and the leading statesmen by merit. Thus Edward VI is shunted off in six lines, with a cross-reference to the Reformation, whereas Thomas Cromwell gets 21 lines to himself plus a separate entry under Tudor Revolution in Government. This may indicate the administrative path to editorial favour, for A.V. Dicey’s academic writings on the 19th ...”

“... originally appeared in the summer and autumn of last year. The biographers are Norman Sherry, Anthony Mockler, Leopoldo Duran and Michael Shelden. The actual information they provide must by now be common knowledge among those who are at all interested in Greene, including those who have simply read the many highly communicative reviews, and in the basic ...”

“... On the afternoon of 15 November 1979 the Prime Minister announced in the House of Commons that Anthony Blunt, retired Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, fellow of the British Academy, former director of the Courtauld Institute, and the most influential figure in the establishment of art history as an academic subject in this country had indeed, as Private Eye had intimated a week before, and as Fleet Street had long been whispering, spied for the Soviet Union ...”

“... contrasts here are livelier. The foil balloon of the corn popper shines beside a pair of soft hot cross buns, a salt shaker and a peach. The handle of the popper protrudes about an inch above the table, giving a sense of space and depth, telling us something about scale (we now know just how far that salt shaker stands from the edge of the table). The peach ...”

“... resisted while others yielded, and still others were merged with foreign ones. Some efforts at cross-cultural communication bore less fruit than others. The marquetry and alabaster workers, master embroiderer and black African parrot-keeper that Charles VIII of France brought back from Italy in 1495 did not all leave a permanent impress on the world of the ...”

“... build an H-bomb, the angry ministers walked out. Above all, Churchill clung to office. He despised Anthony Eden, his heir apparent, who, he said, had ‘gone native’ among the ‘shuffling scuttlers’ at the Foreign Office. The last of the Yalta Big Three, he was determined to end the Cold War by personal diplomacy. The Cabinet was horrified to discover ...”

“... Old Foss after Mr Lear’s famous cat. The other two might perhaps be called Barocco and Rokoko (Anthony read a paper on these last night). But cats have little interest in architecture, so perhaps Rodillardus and Chat Botté would be more appropriate – though French is so difficult to pronounce. Other charming names that occur to me are ...”

“... in these pages that he found the whole affair boring – ‘cold mutton’, as he said about the Anthony Blunt affair. Perhaps he did. Historians are queer. Still, boredom is ruder than execration. I have nearly finished imitating A.J.P. Taylor’s rhythms now. Let me add this. I once wrote a whole book in what I conceived to be his style – short, choppy ...”