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“... The Marquis de Custine is best known for La Russie en 1839, an eloquent account of his travels across European Russia and of the horrors and absurdities of the Russian autocracy. Born in 1790, Custine lost his grandfather at the age of three and, a year later, his father: both were executed during the Jacobin Terror, although both had been sympathetic to the Revolution ...”

“... has recently been discovered and published in Burlington Magazine). In the 15th century the best known antique nude sculpture was the bronze statue of a boy pulling a thorn from his foot, the so-called Spinario (represented in this exhibition by a luxury bronze statuette and a famous drawing made by Jan Gossaert in about 1509 when it was still displayed ...”

“... short visit to Dartmouth; my immediate predecessor, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, for the best part of a year. I was originally invited only for the autumn term of 1982, but the invitation was extended to the winter term of 1983. We returned to London for the month of December 1982 and spent January to March back in Hanover. One of the advantages of ...”

“... It was made to preserve the memory of Thomas Greville, who ‘died in his tender age’ in 1492.Nicholas Orme is perhaps best known for Medieval Children, a lavishly illustrated survey published in 2001, which helped to popularise medievalists’ critique of Ariès. Tudor Children reuses some of the same material, but its ...”

“... sometimes witty. The final room is filled with attempts at the demonic and the witty which are at best merely humorous and at worst embarrassing. Looking at the orgy in Sketchbook No 165 reminds us that Picasso, towards the end of his life, became addicted to all-in wrestling on the telly – as John Richardson informs us in the sympathetic account of those ...”

“... the Museum’s terms of reference that it should have exhibitions which enable us to show the best of contemporary design.’ In like manner one might argue that the universities are for educating people and so it is right and proper that people should be able to buy a degree there. Elton John’s collection, the Sock Shop and Burberrys were not carefully ...”

“... is in large measure the source of these views. On the evidence of the book, I believe both are at best partial truths. McClintock has devoted her life to understanding the genetics of maize by the classical plant-breeder’s methods. After twenty years of close observation in the maize fields, she became uniquely adept at figuring out a plant’s genetics ...”

“... properties, evolution (life, ecology etc) must be the same kind of thing as mind, it amounts at best to a mere verbal conceit. At worst, it amounts to a piece of moral blackmail. The strong implication of Bateson’s argument (though he does not state it explicitly) is that if the whole of organic nature is imbued with qualities of mind, then we as human ...”

“... writers Karl showed that a good editor is like a good teacher, both of whom know how to elicit the best from another mind without unduly influencing it. The editor, however, has far less time to do this than the teacher, and Karl seemed to have an almost mesmeric power to get one to produce copy as well and as quickly as one could.To work alongside him in an ...”

“... after 1945 an unholy alliance of ‘the Beaverbrook press and the left-wing periodicals’ did its best to discredit the Establishment. This conspiracy ‘disintegrated the trust that was once placed in the old governing class’, and although Annan voted for the Labour Government of 1945, he now damns it with faint praise, calling its representatives ...”

“... ingeniously placed before an opening so we can compare it with the earlier work. Its condition is best explained as a reflection of the ageing artist’s impatience with the character of carving, which allows no revisions. Neither marble has anything of the natural poise, let alone the pagan aplomb, of the far more famous nude David, cast in bronze and ...”

“... in this country, though an unfamiliar name to most readers of verse in America. The other, Nicholas Christopher, is one of the most celebrated of America’s younger poets but – I suspect – an unknown figure in England, at least as a poet (his novel, The Soloist, was published by Pan last year). In each case, this disparity in reputation – this ...”

“... portraits – among which that of the Doge Leonardo Loredan in the National Gallery, London is the best, and by far the best preserved – are impassive, whereas Leonardo excelled at painting faces which seem to be listening or about to speak. Returning to the Feast of the Gods with these considerations in mind, we will be ...”

“... in a letter? What peculiar logic in his destiny has brought him, Herschel Shawmut, author of a best-selling Introduction to Music Appreciation and an authority on Pergolesi, to end his days in exile wanted by the law? Part of his complex, involuted answers to these questions seems to lie in the fact of his not quite belonging in America: ‘It’s been a ...”

“... possessed exceptional discrimination, for instance, Alsop points out that in some societies the ‘best suppliers’ are obvious to the upper class, as was the case in his youth when ‘everyone’ knew the best brand of everything from marmalade to shoes. There are some problems of organisation in the book, chiefly caused ...”