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“... another’ is followed by twenty seconds of silence ‘and then a chaffinch starts and/then another’ is followed by another twenty seconds of silence ‘and starts and starts’. This allows Oswald to do what she has always wanted to do, which is to represent being in time, where things recur and repeat, and in which attempts to pause and linger on the moment get thwarted by the necessary flow of time ...”

“... of storytelling in this novel has to do with the death of a dog. Three characters are involved: Michael Luxton, a taciturn dairy farmer; Jack, his elder son, aged 26; and Tom, his much younger son, approaching his 18th birthday. The old sick dog, named Luke, was originally just a farm dog, then for many years Jack’s close companion, but now more recently ...”

“... maids, and later to move to a beautifully distinctive small mansion (including a 15-acre croft and woods) on the smiling green slopes of Easter Ross. Throughout all this he pleased himself. He did not write to other people’s formulae (or not exactly). When Cape wanted him to repeat the Juan model in his fourth novel, he declined, and wrote on Scottish ...”

“... Keynes called him ‘this half human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity’. Professor Gilbert’s enormously thorough research has resulted in a more sober account, and every student of the subject will be in his debt. Yet the Lloyd George who emerges from the copious (though sometimes ...”

“... or automobiles. No prestige or protection. Life is happening everywhere we don’t expect it. Some woods or hills, a sleepy village, a river, a way station.A snub-nosed girl wearing an apron over a short, fur-trimmed jacket sat at a small table with a sad expression on her face. She was watching a boy with a sallow face and a long, translucent neck which had ...”

“... the weather been hazier, more care might have been taken and the collision avoided. In that case, Michael Davie suggests, it’s likely that no one would ever have known how close to disaster they’d been: ‘not all near-misses by aircraft are reported now; and the Ice Patrol wonder how many near-collisions by ships were reported then.’ At the inquiries ...”

“... American empire which she sees as essentially – and uniquely – an economic empire. The Bretton Woods agreement, Gatt and the establishment of the IMF and World Bank combined to give it institutional shape and expression. The classic entity of the new American empire is the sovereign nation-state, rather than the colony. Other commentators on globalisation ...”

“... completely were they forgotten that last year, when the environmental consultants Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger rebuked the environmental movement for neglecting the resources of economic growth and human ingenuity, they seemed unaware that there had once been a movement in America that championed both. Nordhaus and Shellenberger wrote Break ...”

“... when they sank the International Trade Organisation, meant to be the third pillar of the Bretton Woods system after the IMF and World Bank. Rather than risk the limited exemptions to free trade that Latin American and Asian delegates were seeking in order to industrialise or pursue full employment, the neoliberals torpedoed the whole thing before it even got ...”

“... an aggressive woman, but suspect not. At last the bus shows up and we climb in. We stump into the woods at Bridge of Orchy, and up the West Highland Way again, skirting the moor of Rannoch. Our day’s ration will be rather more than the old drovers’ stint. The moor is a bright velvety green, wonderful so long as you don’t have to pick your way over the ...”

“... years at the offices of Horizon. ‘Understandably, Connolly was never comfortable with Kavan,’ Michael Sheldon wrote in Friends of Promise, his book about Connolly. He was presumably referring to her heroin addiction. Friends and mentors over the years – Rhys Davies. Peter Owen, Brian Aldiss – have made considerable efforts to dispel such feelings of ...”

“... Timmy has the natural balance that distinguishes great players – famously, a six-month-old Tiger Woods could stand upright in his father’s hand – and he shows them up as soon as he hits a ball: ‘I stood with shoulders full of balance and, with swing after swing after swing, it all slipped away, leaving me alone and content . . . I turned around to see ...”

“... and aching, Achak begins to imagine telling his life story to the boy, whose name he discovers is Michael. Achak’s father was a shopkeeper in Marial Bai, doing business with ‘Baggara and other Arab businessmen’ from the north as well as with local Dinka people. One night, Achak listens as his father tells Sadiq Aziz, his ‘favourite trading ...”

“... McCluskie remains in prison. It is customary to think of long sentences and long stretches as Michael Howard’s contribution to British penal policy, but he is merely the latest in a long, if occasionally interrupted, line of social conservatives with a particular interest in correction. When, in October 1993, he announced to the Conservative Party ...”

“... though it’s fine if you like a bit of crenellated cream puffery. But I love the hills and woods of the Balmoral estate, the restrained charisma of the River Dee as it winds through the farmland of Crathie. The ‘scenery became prettier & prettier’, Queen Victoria wrote on her first trip to Balmoral, ‘& there is much agriculture & cultivation ...”