Search Results

“... so jealous that the men resorted to fisticuffs over Barbara? What made Janetta, still married to Hugh Slater, fall in love with Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, and would that relationship last?Taylor wades deep into the cigaretty fug of that small literary circle awash with till-boredom-do-us-part love affairs conducted in rented accommodation. (The love affairs ...”

“... Vegas, plus tax) for the opportunity to hear ‘countless stories of heroism and humanity that pay honour to the indomitable force of the human spirit in the face of tragedy’. They have bought replica artefacts, replica clothes, replica perfume (‘Legacy 1912 Titanic’ – a tie-in to a display of vials owned by a perfume merchant called Adolphe Saalfeld ...”

“... Herald as part of a deal involving the acquisition of several lucrative magazine titles. Hugh Cudlipp, chairman of IPC, had given the unions a guarantee to keep the paper going for seven years, and to keep it supporting the Labour movement; at the same time, the paper was not allowed to compete with the existing IPC title, the Daily Mirror. With ...”

“... of Alroy Kear – Maugham’s instantly recognisable portrait of the amiable, self-promoting Hugh Walpole (who regarded Maugham as a friend) in Cakes and Ale – as ‘a clever piece of torture’, a ‘flaying alive’. Then in 1907, the Royal Court put on his comedy Lady Frederick, which had been offered around for several years. No sufficiently ...”

“... seizing the opportunity for a bit of good publicity? On 7 April 1983, there was ‘a meeting to honour the memory of Arthur and Cynthia Koestler’. The order of service opens with a suicide note. ‘The purpose of this note,’ which Koestler signed in June 1982, ‘is to make it unmistakeably clear that I intend to commit suicide by taking an overdose of ...”

“... Bellow called him the conductor on the gravy train. Wherever they were passing out money, honour, position, awards – there was Kazin. I didn’t read his memoirs. Well – I did read A Walker in the City, but not the last volume. He’s rewriting his own history. Apparently he didn’t even know Edmund Wilson all that well, and I don’t think ...”

“... is a culture clash between two cities forty miles apart, and Crawford’s book seeks to do it honour. He calls it ‘a treasured rivalry’, and he isn’t wrong: each city would be slightly less without the other’s countervailing charm. We love Edinburgh for its innovations and its geniuses and scoff at it for thinking it invented human nature. (David ...”

“... John Cage, who died immediately after this book intended to honour his 80th birthday was published, was a man marvellously indulged and humoured. Perhaps no one among 20th-century buffoons accumulated so much intellectual capital or secured such wide forbearance, and few have been so famous. He was included in every reckoning of modern music’s development and achievement and granted a potent influence on artists in diverse media and of all ages ...”

“... French stubbornness rightly yields, and whom the arrogance of the whole world rises as one to honour’. The point about ‘native French stubbornness’ makes sense only if the teacher were not himself French; Abelard came from Brittany, which wasn’t part of medieval France. The teacher in turn calls his beloved ‘the only disciple of philosophy among ...”

“... it had been at Fettes on 5 November 1956, at the very height of the crisis, that an effigy of Hugh Gaitskell (a Wykehamist, and leader of the Labour Party in its opposition to war) was burned, in order to remind the boys what treachery still meant. This event would have been part of the folk memory of the school when the young Anthony Blair, then still a ...”

“... confirming narratives of earlier pieces – the strange devices and containers Dilworth makes to honour and assuage a fear of death. We stay in the comfort zone of a shared past. Dilworth’s sculptures don’t have Damien Hirst’s Barnum and Bailey confidence, their forensic nakedness and weird, poetic titles, their cod Victorian ambiguity (somewhere ...”

“... End of the Affair. These writers and many others of many stripes – Herbert Read, D.H. Lawrence, Hugh Walpole, for instance – admired him because he was shrewd and helpful about the business of writing. That Max Saunders is a fervent admirer in this tradition is amply proved by his devoting the best part of two decades to this biography. He attends ...”

“... could be imagined) and the family’s grander connections with the ‘Dorsetshire Hardy’s’, in honour of whom Hardy had considered changing his name to Thomas le Hardy. Hardy didn’t change his name mercifully, but he does tailor the facts to suit the respectable genteel image he wanted to promote and cuts out the names of many of his early family and ...”

“... with wonderful surliness at occasions of duty. Nancy Mitford related one such fiasco: a dinner in honour of the Princess in Paris in 1959: Dinner was at 8.30 and at 8.30 Princess Margaret’s hairdresser arrived, so we waited for hours while he concocted a ghastly coiffure. She looked like a huge ball of fur on two well-developed legs. Shortest dress I ever ...”

“... a growing rift between the complex and confused social realities and the oversimplified ideals of honour that continued, more and more obsessively, to be voiced. It is not surprising that, by the turn of the century, the Spaniard was regularly appearing in other European literatures as a figure of fun, an absurd posturing ninny. Yet this was also the Golden ...”