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“... Whether this realignment manifests itself in an increase in the number of deaths which litter the North’s daily calendar depends in part on the reaction of the Unionists, and in part on the degree of finesse with which the British Government approaches a task which is infinitely more difficult than the actual negotiation of the Agreement. The Irish ...”

“... of novels follows the career of a Scotswoman, Chris Guthrie, from childhood on a croft in the North-Eastern coastlands, through the disruption of the First World War and two marriages, to middle age in a soulless city, ‘Dundon’, which combines repugnant features of Aberdeen and Dundee. The first segment, Sunset Song, is regarded in Scotland as a ...”

“... much of which has been in revolt against the government in Khartoum for the last two years. In the north-east the famine which has decimated Eritrea and Tigre is spreading, exacerbated by refugees fleeing from their homes in Ethiopia. Sudan has a harsh climate at the best of times. Its civic life has flowered with little encouragement from nature. The charm ...”

“... house, or Perilous, when flocks of geese rise, month-long, from the fields and arc towards the north, I drown my vows and start again, one heartbeat at a time, till swallows map the lanes from spire to spire with mint and ozone, summering the ...”

“... on their toy typewriters; the sea-lions bring down a gazelle; the eels walk on two legs to the north gate and go home. I feel a sensation of overwhelming disgust. I make myself turn and leave the side of the ...”

“... Bunker Day breaks and the night steams North, Its pitch-dark barges heading for Cape Rigor and the Land of Truth, Perfection’s speculative glare; The seas ice over and preserve Their endlessly refractive coast, An empty and eternal curve, Light packed against the polar frost. These August nights are nothing more Than souped-up evenings, sweat-soaked sheets, Or coming to on someone’s floor And morning’s featherweight retreats; And even when we die we live Hopped up in someone’s latest suit, Pumped full of sour preservative, Our grin set at the absolute, For several sticky nights at least Until we’re spaded in or burn And flames or worms or poltergeist Snap down the lid on our return ...”

“... by Fulford Pond, one of the mammals I knew from nature books, some vivid creature from the distant North: the Arctic fox; a sudden wolverine. In stories, the animals talk. Their faces are maps; they come to us with gifts or riddles in the still of afternoon when snow begins to fall – a covenant too subtle for the gods we answer to. I used to think the ...”

“... John Cheever’s two celebrated novels, The Wapshot Chronicle and The Wapshot Scandal, are now reissued in one volume. In this form, we can see that the two are really one and the end was always implied in the beginning. We are often told that the American novel is not very deeply rooted in the social world, that in a society so fluid and so quickly changing fiction hardly has time to take stock of the way things actually work and tends to blow up into some kind of surreal fantasy ...”

“... great traditions of philosophy ... Sometimes he would wander into irrelevant invectives against John Stuart Mill, who in a footnote had once referred to Bowen ... as ‘an obscure American’. It was Bowen who twenty years earlier had within two years of Mill’s publishing the Examination instituted an elective course at Harvard entirely devoted to it. In ...”

“... an epoch, spelling Humanism. Those ice reefs repeat the motto whispered by the snow-drifts on the north side of the woods and model villages: the sun has a favourite leaning, and the Nordic flaw is a glow alcohol can fan into a flame. And what is this truth that holds the grey shaking metal whole while we believe in it? The radar keeps its sweeping ...”

“... road to the Brensholmen ferry: snow gentians, mineral blue and perfect, like a child’s idea of north; but here is all marshland and water between the fields where they still cut and rake the hay with tools that are heirlooms. Two types of bog-cotton grow: torvull and duskull; and lady’s mantle: Alchemilla mollis; marikåpe. On the high road, over the ...”

“... that would strengthen Scotland’s ‘auld alliance’ with France and second to neutralise the north while Henry’s war against France was prosecuted. In the event, his military campaign failed, though it’s possible that he did succeed in laying some foundations during the wars of the 1540s for the Scottish Reformation of 1560 and growing co-operation ...”

“... Birds are conspicuous diurnal animals, and they exist in a rich variety of species in Europe and North America. In contrast, mammals – about which we might be expected to have a more immediate curiosity – are much more difficult to study in the field, particularly if one happens to live in Europe. Most mammals are nocturnal. Often they rely on means of ...”

“... performance that Tony Blair put on last week in the uterine comfort of his constituency in the North-East: that other Labour Party could never have followed him so slavishly wherever he chose to take them in the wake of George Bush, would have known it needed at all costs to replace him for its own long-term good, let alone ours, and so never allowed him ...”

“... where one can.In his recent book Dick: The Man who Is President (New Press, £14.99), John Nichols, the Nation’s Washington correspondent, makes a persuasive case for the (by now fairly familiar) idea that the vice-presidency is the real locus of power in the current US administration: Cheney runs the show and pulls the strings while the ...”