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“... parents had moved to England after she was married). Hannah believed in a feminism based on public service, not on personal emancipation. Mary made occasional visits, feeding the girls too much ice cream and letting them fall off their ponies. At school, Ray liked hockey and maths; tutored by Bertrand Russell (who was married to Mary’s sister, Alys), she won ...”

“... application, aggression. Qualities not attractive in themselves, and often put to the service of poorer ends. Guðmundsson frequently mentions Laxness’s charm. He asked a lot of his mother, his wives and his friends. (The one paid job he had in his life was as a receptionist for an Icelandic radio station and he didn’t keep it for ...”

“... had won the willing patronage of numerous conservative Congressmen and Senators – including Robert Michel, the Republican Minority Leader, Barber Conable (now head of the World Bank) and Jesse Helms. The real high point came, however, when President Nixon, warmed by the Moonies’ unconditional support for him during Watergate, invited Moon to the White ...”

“... Sisman is not usually taken in, least of all by unsubstantiated assertions from Taylor himself. Robert Cole’s book, The Traitor within the Gates, forms an instructive contrast. In his treatment of several episodes, Cole has placed his reliance on the authority of the autobiography. For example, he simply reiterates its hard-luck tale of how Taylor’s ...”

“... Extracts, or pericopes – to borrow his typically ornate term – from Robert Craft’s diary of his years with Stravinsky first appeared in the famous series of their conversation books issued throughout the Sixties. In 1972, after the composer’s death, a far bigger selection was published as Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship, 1948-1971 ...”

“... escape conscription but in 1934 his father, Louis, forced him into France’s compulsory military service. For some time he lived on his own in the family house, undertaking so-called renovations, but his father arranged to have him evicted on the grounds that he was destroying the property. After a breakdown in 1945 Pierre hoped to come and live with Louise ...”

“... publication in 1967 of a drastically abbreviated and expurgated edition, incompetently edited by Robert Rhodes James, which was greeted with widespread ridicule and contemptuous comparison with Nicolson. After Coats died in 1990, the diaries passed to Channon’s son, Paul, who died in 2007. Now, with the encouragement of his children, three formidable ...”

“... on the whole to have done well despite his unsoldierly sloppiness. As Alan Judd remarks, his war service deserved more praise than it got – another instance of his chronic bad luck. Allen Tate once told me that after Ford’s death he helped Janice Biala, Ford’s widow, to sell the author’s papers to Princeton. They rented a pick-up truck and set off to ...”

“... missed each other in New York and Los Angeles, but eventually met at Michael Powell’s memorial service. (He said he would probably not have made GoodFellas, but Powell had picked up the script and said how good it was.) Scorsese liked Donnie Brasco very much, pointed out the differences between the two films, and thought I should make it. I flew back to ...”

“... and statues – the Ozymandias complex. But they are hopelessly old-fashioned, and any reader of Robert Graves could mentally update the plot as they expire in a chaos of money laundries, drug deals and palace feuds. Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega, the two tyrants of this title, belonged to a specific breed that might be termed the unpatriotic or ...”

“... welfare state. Health, education, transport and housing are more and more stratified. Service and new flexible-production industries crowd the South-East. The privileges of Thatcherism are distinctly regional, as are its penalties. Underlying these new inequalities is an antique theory, tragically misapplied. Mrs Thatcher is all for ...”

“... cultivated by Lady Morgan – as for Scotchness. Jane Austen was impressed by neither Glorvina nor Robert Burns, championing instead that model of quiet English moral sobriety Fanny Price. Brigid Brophy’s funniest piece is on fish, that silent persecuted majority, whom even hostesses who are delighted to provide a vegetarian meal (‘Oh, by the way, you do ...”

“... give scope for intelligence, but it could also advance the hesitating and time-serving nitwit Robert Craigie to high judicial office. There is the even more lamentable career of Tweeddale as Secretary of State, a post which presumably had some relation to the fact that his son-in-law was prime minister, and which had a lot to do with the initial success ...”

“... Jebb, was being received into the Catholic Church, Belloc, at a particularly solemn moment in the service, ‘leaned forward to Father Vincent McNabb, who was conducting the ceremony, and said, in a loud voice: “Excuse me, father, is there a telephone in the sacristy?” ’ And again: ‘At the great Requiem which was offered for Chesterton’s soul in ...”

“... plotting: since the crime has already been committed (the abduction of Owen Kane, the killing of Robert, the RUC officer), the narratives are internalised – rueful accounts of the lives of good but guilty men. The action is economical, the characters entirely engaging: both novels were made into successful films, full of psychological insights, unravelling ...”