Search Results

“... Soon​ after firing James Comey, Donald Trump baited the former FBI director. ‘Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!’ Trump tweeted. Comey replied a month later, while testifying before the Senate intelligence committee. ‘Lordy,’ he said, ‘I hope there are tapes ...”

“... one does the letters of Madame de Sevigné, Madame du Deffand, Edward Fitzgerald – or indeed of William Cowper, the new edition of whose Letters and Prose Writings has just reached its fourth volume. Yet Hardy’s letters are admirable in their way, laconic and to the point, written with his eye on the spirit-level, as becomes the son of a small ...”

“... early 1980s, Ismail Merchant set out to make The Deceivers. He was without his usual collaborator, James Ivory, who was not enthusiastic about the project. The film eventually appeared in 1988, and was met by a near unanimous lack of critical acclaim. The screenplay was based on a novel by John Masters (1914-83), who had served in the British army in India ...”

“... and the most intellectually distinguished of all European universities, the home of Duns Scotus, William Ockham and the Mertonian school. Volume III brings us to the Renaissance. We notice immediately the firm direction of the editor, James McConica, who has imposed an order on the writing of the history of the University ...”

“... For M.R. James it is Eton and King’s that are gardens – incomparable gardens which are, however, precisely made for thus exclaiming about as one sits in their created shade. With the exclamation itself nobody need quarrel. It is as applicable to the material fabric as to much in the life and spirit of these magnificent royal foundations ...”

“... the course of his research, Bannister struck up a correspondence with Montague Rhodes James. Though he is now more famous for his ghost stories, M.R. James was one of the most important medievalists of his time. He had an eye for a sharp detail: privately he described Bannister as a ‘good sort’, but ‘with ...”

“... claiming that a hitherto undocumented family tradition identified it as a likeness of William Shakespeare. Spielmann liked the picture, about which he wrote in the Connoisseur and later in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but was unimpressed by the claim that it depicted Shakespeare; he was particularly unimpressed by an ...”

“... victim. The investigators in question are damaged, a common feature of Dexter’s characters. Jack James, the narrator, is almost as screwed up as his brother Ward, the titular ‘paperboy’, star reporter on the Miami Times. Jack self-destructs in his first year at the University of Florida, returning in shame to the narcotic routines of his father’s home ...”

“... and his wife of ten years, Mary Anne Hanson. She had for some time been having an affair with William Rowland Alder, a lawyer. The pair abused and mocked Lord Portsmouth, both physically and mentally, even making him a spectator to their fornication. These details came to light through a legal instrument known as a ‘commission in lunacy’, whose roots ...”

“... the richest store of information. Two, the Gladstones and the Freuds, are investigated in detail. William Gladstone’s sister Helen was a misfit who rejected the obligations of female usefulness and became addicted to opiates. Her rebellion then took a religious turn, as she transferred the obedience she might have been expected to owe her male relations to ...”

“... every sign of strain: Someone called Shultz is now in charge at State. The new prince is named William. The odd train Starts up again as if to celebrate, But Aslef thinks a moving train just fosters Flexible notions with regard to rosters. Ray Buckton therefore plans a whole new strike. Meanwhile the members of the SDP Mark ballot slips to name the man ...”

“... No part of Greek history should come home to us like the third century bc,’ William Tarn wrote in 1913. ‘It is the only period that we can in the least compare with our own.’ And yet the third century – standing midway between the classical age and the coming of Rome, undocumented by any intact surviving source – gets little attention even from specialists, despite the many intriguing figures who helped shape it ...”

“... but some people worried that Germany would lash out in revenge. One morning, on the Isle of Dogs, William Regan heard a small plane fly over and get shot down, causing a surprisingly large explosion. The same thing happened to another plane, and another. ‘I said to Alf that the gunners were on form, three over, three down. Hardly credible. We began to ...”

“... like a ballroom without women. Then I remember foot and mouth and put out more viricide and straw. William Youatt, whose The Pig: A Treatise on the Breeds, Management, Feeding and Medical Treatment of Swine of 1847 is still the standard work on the British pig, prints many anecdotes of the docility, gentleness, affection, cleanliness, intelligence, even ...”

“... the greatest man since the Deluge.’ This assessment of Alexander von Humboldt by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, which Andrea Wulf quotes in her fine new biography, may be a slight exaggeration, but it reflects Humboldt’s extraordinary reputation among his contemporaries. On the centennial of his birth, 14 September 1869, elaborate celebrations were ...”