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“... suspended. These moments violate the integrity of the drama, but also give it definition. D.A. Miller, in Place for Us (1998), a brilliant essay on the American musical and homosexuality, describes the ‘fundamental structural opposition between narrative and number’ and points out that in Gypsy, so often taken as a paradigm of the integrated ...”

“... is no coincidence that the best political styles belong to Enoch Powell, Anthony Wedgwood-Benn and Michael Foot, all men ‘committed to working on and defending the idea of the United Kingdom’. As it happens, Mr Powell himself contributes a piece on ‘The Language of Politics’, in which he concludes that although speeches are briefer and politicians a ...”

“... film form can save a man’s life. And a dead film life can be reborn. When the new star, Peppy Miller, played by Bérénice Bejo, rescues Valentin from his gloom, saying she won’t act in her new hit if he isn’t allowed to join her, a marvellous verbal formulation maps a whole intricate world. Valentin doesn’t believe in himself, or in this second ...”

“... right. It can still be peered into at the National Gallery (at the moment it is part of Jonathan Miller’s exhibition), which also houses the Fabritius picture. Perhaps it is because they deal so magically with light and space that de Hooch’s pictures make you preternaturally aware of the relationship between flat picture and depicted light and real space ...”

“... questions about the mysteries of the Devil gets such good historical answers. From Tymms (1949) to Miller (1985) to the touchingly named Herdman (is he trying to keep us safe, inside the yard?) the literary study of doubles roots itself in Christian accounts of the world, describing how, by trick, by election or by sin, characters break open, split apart, see ...”

“... and ‘green growth’ pushed by – among others – the former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and his cast of visiting Dutch architects, questioning post-Hurricane Sandy projects like the Big U seawall proposed for lower Manhattan: it would attract tourists and protect Wall Street, but displace storm surge waters to surrounding, poorer ...”

“... by a gallery of friends and neighbours, are ready and waiting for them. Jonathan and Rachel Miller contribute their Saturday Salad that can increase in size as the friends flood in. Some of them may arrive in the condition of Rowan Anderson when Maureen Sutton was murdered: comatose from drink. The brandy and champagne mix here called ‘Colin’s ...”

“... stylistic analysis. There is also the method of ‘too close reading’ wittily practised by David Miller, especially in his book Hidden Hitchcock (2016).Wolfson’s work is not unrelated to this last example – both writers are concerned with seeing apparitions and being glad to see them – but she tends to think that patient, uncensored curiosity will do ...”

“... has been forthcoming from the press. Another painful development was the publication in June of Michael Leapman’s Last Days of the Beeb: a narrative of power plays and mean-spirited intrigues. Here was a writer about the BBC for whom the programmes and their producers did not seem to matter all that much. What mattered was behind the screen, and at the ...”

“... his ‘How I See It’ column for the last time; Conservatism in Basingstoke has a new face. Maria Miller is a working mother of three, campaigning vigorously on local issues: education, ‘local environment improvement’ and crime. She ought to win easily. The constituency, a hotbed of affluence, has returned a Tory in every election since World War ...”

“... to understand for himself – and so do the journalists who write about him. Or most of them. Michael Wolff never planned to write a book about the president just as Trump never planned to become president. Wolff remained uncertain about his book’s prospects in the days leading to its publication in mid-January, though things began to look up when he ...”

“... jokes. Such and such a man was ‘on a fault-finding mission’. ‘Marriages end,’ she said to Michael Neve, ‘but divorces never do,’ which Neve said was as Wildean as it gets.It was J.D. Salinger, writing about William Shawn, who spoke of that rare thing, ‘born great artist-editors’, lovers of ‘the long shot’. I’ve admired a few ...”

“... books on Dostoevsky. Plots is a version of a series of lectures he gave in 2011, and Robin Feuer Miller, in a witty and affectionate introduction, describes the printed book as a last work of a special kind: ‘How typical of Belknap to produce a magnum opus that is particular, profound, original and short.’ This is a magnum opus with no pretensions to ...”

“... Ghosts did not go out when electric light came in, though it could be felt at the time that this was bound to happen. They can look like a trick of the moonlight and candlelight of the past: and yet most of the pieces in the Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories are taken from the well-lighted last quarter of the last century and first quarter of this one ...”

“... impulses of their enemies. ‘It’s no fun to protest on an empty stomach,’ said Mayor Michael Bloomberg to assembled journalists, ‘so you might want to try a restaurant. Or you might want to go shopping, maybe for another pair of sneakers for the march.’ New York is a Democrat city, but also a famous backdrop, and the Republicans took the ...”