Search Results

“... At this stage, one of Toryism’s least secret weapons was the Young Conservative organisation. Anthony Bailey, then a schoolboy in Hampshire, recalls: ‘I did a number of things purely because they provided a way of meeting girls. I joined the local branch of the Young Conservatives for that purpose. Labour continued to govern the nation, but I was less ...”

“... the encephalitis which has sent insecticide helicopters whirring above New York for the last two summers. Air-conditioning, the American addiction to perfect frigidity, has been outlawed. Despite floods, winds, thunder and lightning, hail, the population of the US remains fixated on celebrity-goggling and the accumulation of fashionable debris. T.C. Boyle is ...”

“... stretched beneath a pallOf melancholy that would leaveSomething of its gloom behind ...Or Anthony Thwaite:Now what you feared so long has got you too.The blankness has descended where you lieDeep in that building you already knew ...Or Steve Ellis:Hull was the global meridianall poetry was measured from;and now you’re gone, a flat blank gapempty as ...”

“... of an English Country House points towards another aspect of their inheritance:As early as 1656 [Anthony Ashley-Cooper, subsequently the 1st earl] had owned a share in a plantation in Barbados, while in 1663 he was appointed by Royal Charter one of the eight Lords Proprietor of the Province of Carolina in North America … He was a member of the Royal ...”

“... I asked my father why he wasn’t going to the house in south-west France where he had for several summers spent a few weeks, his answer sounded straightforward. ‘Too far from Figeac,’ he said. Too far from Figeac? I asked. The house was a distance from the town in the Lot with its baker and café, this was true, but in his phrasing there was, as there ...”

“... palace and its park We take our common place along the road, As summer joins the queue of other summers, Driving towards the dark. 20 July. Although the East Coast rail franchise has now passed from GNER to National Express eccentricity happily persists: the trolley attendant this afternoon warns against too sudden opening of the sparkling water lest it be ...”

“... leg, if you like. I only saw Nureyev dance once, in Manon at Covent Garden. He was partnered by Anthony Dowell, who is much more delicately made. There was nothing delicate about Nureyev. He had legs, like the leg in the painting, that were not so much legs as hindquarters. Nureyev was often compared to Nijinsky and the comparison is apt. He was like ...”

“... discovered the delights of reading herself Her Majesty was keen to pass them on. ‘Do you read, Summers?’ she said to the chauffeur en route for Northampton. ‘Read, maam?’ ‘Books?’ ‘When I get the chance, maam. I never seem to find the time.’ ‘That’s what a lot of people say. One must make the time. Take this morning. You’re going to be ...”