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“... Briefly during the second act Michael Frayn’s stage-play, Make and Break, transcends its setting, a Frankfurt trade fair, touching on a general gloom. Mrs Rogers is treating Garrard, a goatish sales rep, to the fruits of Buddhism. It is late in the day. Elsewhere assignations are arranged, faces stuffed, drinks swilled ...”

“... questions has become: what is analytical philosophy? An influential answer has been provided by Michael Dummett, until recently the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford and the author of several important books on Frege and the philosophy of language. Significantly, Dummett’s most recent books have been concerned with history, particularly his Origins of ...”

“... shortage of actual instances of articulate unbelief. This intriguing paradox lies at the heart of Michael Hunter’s book, which combines lightly revised versions of his previously published essays with newly written chapters to advance a distinctive argument about the significance of atheism in England and Scotland before the Enlightenment. Building on his ...”

“... the only one to reduce loads to below planning standard on the Metropolitan/Circle line east of Baker Street. It has some effect on the District and Piccadilly Lines around Earl’s Court; this is because many passengers from the Ealing area would use Crossrail in preference to the Underground. A bill was submitted to Parliament in 1991, and reluctantly ...”

“... spoke fluently and agreeably, without passion. George W. Bush had lately ignored the advice of the Baker Commission to withdraw from Iraq, and had ordered the ‘surge’ of additional troops headed by General Petraeus; there was a feeling close to despair among the arts and media crowd in the room, but Obama mentioned none of that: you might have thought the ...”

“... Shakespeare’s alleged sojourn among the Lancashire recusants, first put forward by Oliver Baker in 1937 but given much fuller and more closely argued treatment by Honigmann. One might expect a biographer to feel obliged to pass judgment as to whether an episode with such far-reaching implications actually happened or not, but Honan declines to make ...”

“... is a public discussion forum dedicated to the conflict in Northern Ireland. It was founded by Michael O’Hare, who, as a young man in County Armagh, had seen the violence and disdain with which British soldiers could treat Catholic families such as his own. In 1976, a British paratrooper shot dead his 12-year-old sister, Majella. Like Andy, ...”

“... to the House of Lords in Thatcher’s farewell Honours List in 1991. In the same year, Kenneth Baker got a job on Hanson’s board. In the Thatcher years, Hanson felt he was part of the Government. He demanded and got an interview with Nigel Lawson in which he offered to buy the BP shares the Government were selling – for six billion pounds. Lawson ...”

“... start, so criticism has been slow to gather momentum. Even the recent spate of studies – by Michael Kirkham, Stan Smith, and the contributors to Jonathan Barker’s Art of Edward Thomas – seems more fortuitous than co-ordinated. Thomas, as Robert Frost reminded him, ‘knew the worth of [his] bays’. However, it is unwise to die in war when a ...”

“... filmed and the written. In literature there is no clock time, no ‘real time’. When Nicholson Baker decides to set a whole novel in a lunch break (The Mezzanine) or Olaf Stapledon chooses a timescale of two billion years for Last and First Men, no technical innovation is necessary. They aren’t inventing a freedom but exercising one inherent in the ...”

“... and defiant frankness. This qualm was both expressed and lightly lampooned by Nicholson Baker, writing in U&I: ‘Hey, I’m reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library, and you know, once you get used to the initially kind of disgusting level of homosexual sex, which quickly becomes really interesting as a kind of ethnography, you ...”

“... by an old and unamused Queen Victoria and an equally unsmiling Elizabeth I, bore the slogan: ‘Baker Street Madam Offers Domination, Correction and Discipline.’ According to the logic of this advertisement, the commercial basis of the waxworks may tame this fearsome trio by portraying them as prostitutes, but British subjects are still intended to abase ...”

“... of her indispensability. Its fate was nominally determined by a backbenchers’ amendment to Baker’s Education Bill; in practice, it was government policy. We should remember who those backbenchers were: Norman Tebbit and Michael Heseltine. It seems fair to say that neither they nor the hundred or so Conservative MPs ...”

“... one’s sense of the possibilities. Fifteen years ago we enjoyed the primes of Jon Vickers, Janet Baker, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Joan Sutherland – all of whom came triumphantly into that category; the voices of Cathy Berberian and Peter Pears vitally inspired Berio and Britten to write important new works for them. Today the excellence of Placido ...”

“... activist whose convictions had a deep influence on Frank, her oldest son. He had three siblings, Michael, Bridget and Margaret; Michael went on to become a notably progressive archbishop of Canterbury. Frank’s brilliance was evident from the start. He taught himself to read almost as soon as he could talk and won a ...”