Search Results

“... In Britain it was not until the Lady Chatterley trial that ‘the masses’ were permitted to read a work formerly deemed pornographic. The celebrated question posed by the prosecution counsel – ‘would you be willing for your wives or servants to read this book?’ – reminds us of the frisson of Establishment ...”

“... his views had changed. Even so, he is right to say that the best way to learn about science is to read what leading scientists have to say about their subject and in the majority of these essays he proves himself a worthy successor to those whom he praises from his childhood reading. Professor Maynard Smith lays much of the blame for the public ...”

“... have a child I hate children I don’t have a child Jean says she’ll scream.’ ‘Don’t read books about schizophrenia. I want to read books about schizophrenia, especially Laing’s books and the books from Kingsley Hall.’ Yeah, fine, if you must, whatever. ‘Now I’m two people.’ Oh, OK.The art world loved ...”

“... It follows that a work of art is not a classic if it insists, apparently, on being read in one way. By that criterion, Ulysses would appear to be a classic. Joyce relentlessly explicated it, and gave his fans the authorised version of its structure, but the user’s manual doesn’t limit the ways in which the book may be ...”

“... books. One in Welsh!’ J.M. Barrie, something of an expert on children who never grow up, came to read to them at Glamis. Crawfie was the first of the Windsor grasses – in her native Kilmarnock she would have been called a ‘clype’, a tittle-tattle – but bitter words against the crown tend to come from the royals themselves, not their servants.James VI ...”

“... developed by Orton and Stoppard, cultural despair variously expressed – for instance, by Herbert Read and Kingsley Amis; and then to the sorts of things about which Appleyard enjoys talking, such as Brutalism and Pop Art. He does not neglect Russell, Ayer, Popper etc; he neglects very little. Indeed the quantity of material he doesn’t neglect is ...”

“... on the impact of the outside world on their people rather than the other way round. Even Peter Pulzer’s excellent ‘political history of a minority’ does not quite escape from such introversion. The two Jews whose impact on German politics was the greatest, the founders of the German labour movement, Marx and Lassalle, barely appear (there are ...”

“... attacks her failure to set up an inquiry into the behaviour of security officers who, according to Peter Wright’s Spycatcher, sought to undermine the Wilson premiership. These charges, as Mr Dalyell frames them, have either been denied or brushed aside by Mrs Thatcher or her spokesmen. The evidence on offer is sometimes thin. A not-proven verdict would seem ...”

“... The text of the poem in Jon Stallworthy’s anthology has two misprints: for ‘falling’ read ‘fading’; for ‘The plains’, ‘These plains’. In Fast Forward, Peter Porter meditates persistently on the decline of Classical culture and the threat of nuclear war. What comes of the used-up Mediterranean When ...”

“... which awarded him the Grand Prix d’Or for this book, and the coffee-tables where he is often read. Nonetheless, it is indicative that even in this glossy biography the hero is not so much Napoleon and the military as the civilian bourgeoisie. For it was mainly they, Tulard argues, especially the Notables, who backed Napoleon in 1799 as the only saviour ...”

“... years later, she married a future postmaster; they had three children – Basil and Winifred and Peter. She published a few stories in magazines, and was sneered at by her husband’s relatives. In her sixties she wrote three books which made her famous as an articulate inhabitant of that strange planet, the countryside. The books in the trilogy called Lark ...”

“... and resembles the poorly-lit equipment-store of a butcher’s shop. The labels were quite hard to read in the reverential murk as thousands shuffled slowly past dirks, claymores, muskets and the amazing detail of basket-handled swords. How many knew that dried fish-skin (especially ray-skin) was the preferred wrapping for gentlemen’s sword-hilts? Obsession ...”

“... most familiar point of entry. Such moments may also provide their most compelling inducements to read on: No resolve about places, the latch-key to our drifting lives, seems relevant without this smallest notion of dust. How to purge the dismal objection to this, remains a question. Not to be answered, but used, as a metabolic regulator: pulse rate, place ...”

“... along: the Battle of Waterloo was a cock-fight between little ‘Boney’ and old ‘Nosey’. As Peter Hofschröer’s elegant and meticulous book shows, Wellington did not escape being cut down to size himself. Wellington’s Smallest Victory describes the model of the battlefield of Waterloo constructed by Captain William Siborne, first exhibited in London ...”

“... by a bright, time-warped 16-year-old from the Cambridge High School for Girls. You daren’t skip-read for fear of being ticked off by Commander Dalgleish for misquoting Jane Austen. Despite (or because of) all this, Original Sin has been a notable success as far as that freakish segment of the population, the purchasers of hardback novels, is concerned. Dame ...”