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“... seem absurd, despite the deep sofas, huge ashtrays and shag-pile carpets. Miss Brookner’s sharp eye for decor has always been a resource. Although Heather runs successfully enough the boutique her parents have given her to play with, at home she remains impenetrably placid. Initially she reminds us of the rich daughter staying with her protective ...”

“... dove, which are found nowhere else. (‘Sides of neck and upper breast dark vinaceous buff, in sharp contrast to buff lower breast and abdomen’, says Hilty and Brown’s Guide to the Birds of Colombia). The dove was indigenous to a ‘red zone’, an area with high guerrilla activity. The embassy man ‘cracked’, the diplomat said: he took off to see ...”

“... clerk, examining the author’s credit card in Seattle, asked him if he was related to the poet Stephen Spender. Assured of his customer’s identity, the clerk expressed his pleasure: ‘Gee, a near-celebrity.’ No doubt the status of full celebrity was reserved for movie stars and ball-players. At any rate there is little doubt that Spender is the most ...”

“... not simply the geopolitics, of the Chinese presence in Africa. Each chapter of his book offers sharp-eyed reportage of his encounters with the new pioneers in each of the 15 countries he visited south of the Sahara. Some Chinese came to Africa as employees of a state company, and then stayed behind, but most made the move on their own. Impoverished masses ...”

“... contest their standing; the ruling helped everyone. Following a barrage of criticism, including a sharp response from the judiciary, the proposal to restrict standing has now been dropped. Thanks apparently to a sudden conversion, Grayling’s response to the consultation begins: ‘I believe in protecting judicial review as a check on unlawful executive ...”

“... of President Bush’s foreign policy team have even begun echoing those leftist critics, such as Stephen Cohen, who miss no opportunity to denounce ‘the disastrous failure of US policy towards post-Communist Russia’. Best known for his 1973 study of Bukharin, Cohen is presumably well prepared to imagine how Russian history might have gone if events had ...”

“... In 1771, reflecting the growing public sentiment against the slave trade, the reformer Granville Sharp prosecuted a man named Stapylton who had taken his runaway slave, Thomas Lewis, forcibly on board ship. The trial judge, Lord Mansfield, tried to evade the moral issue by directing the jury that the case depended simply on whether Lewis was Stapylton’s ...”

“... a menu of ‘Primary Colors Specials’, including Lasagne di Paul Begalanese and Pork Chop George Stephen-applesauce. There’s a copy prominently displayed in the new books section of the White House library, and 742,000 have been shipped to bookstores to meet the demand. It’s number one on the New York Times bestseller list; North American paperback ...”

“... just joined them.’ ‘Robin, at that moment in the cottage near Skipton, was eating dinner with Stephen.’ Surely the art of narration ought to be a little less blatant than this? Since the novelist can hardly simulate the essentially voyeuristic pleasure of the Dallas cut – when we observe with our own eyes the switch from the legitimate domicile to the ...”

“... one, on Richardson and Milton, dating from as long ago as 1968), is richly written, contains many sharp critical insights, and shows the author to have a good ear for nuances of language in the literary works she chooses to discuss. At the same time, she reveals some straining in her pursuit of the chief ‘argument’ – namely, that ...”

“... Brockett in The Well of Loneliness bears an unmistakable resemblance to Coward. Hall’s heroine Stephen Gordon (Radclyffe Hall was called John for most of her adult life) knows that Brockett, a playwright with soft white hands and an effeminate voice, is a man ‘who would never require more of her than she could give’. When they visit Versailles together ...”

“... chauvinism was long hardwired into constitutional interpretation. According to Stephen Tierney, the constitution’s Whiggish interpreters bear considerable responsibility for the current predicament of the United Kingdom. There has been no serious attempt to understand the 1707 Treaty of Union as a fundamental ‘transformation’ rather ...”

“... mankind is a matter of comparative indifference. In the childhood of the century James Joyce alias Stephen Dedalus went out from Dublin ‘to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race’. What Joyce forged in the smithy of his soul has become available to others on easier terms, and the conscience of his race (‘conscience’ as in ...”

“... Stephen Sondheim is America’s master of musical theatre, as long as we are prepared for the work to be brilliant but not relaxed. His is a voice of solitude struggling to believe in company, and that of a lifelong game-player, so be careful about taking this book at face value as an autobiography, or as giving the whole story ...”

“... when the ‘facts’ are right, how much more so when they are wrong? Hugh David’s book about Stephen Spender misleads in every way, factually as well as aesthetically, although in the general welter of disinformation it is barely possible to distinguish fact from treatment. As David’s previous studies of the period reveal, he has a rather engagingly ...”