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“... edition of Dante, published in 1481. In his discursive introduction to this, Landino has a long passage about the excellence of Florentine artists, in which Castagno is eloquently praised as a ‘lover of the difficulties of art’, and a painter of great vividness and immediacy (‘vivo et prompto molto’). Landino, born in 1424, was only a few years ...”

“... the man himself, who is elusive in ways that go beyond the usual patchiness of evidence after the passage of centuries.Like many of the makers and shakers of late Elizabethan culture, Hilliard was of provincial artisan stock. He was born in Exeter around 1547, the eldest of eight children of Richard Hilliard, a goldsmith, and Laurence Wall, the daughter of ...”

“... humourless para-political thrillers of espionage as Monimbo (copyright Mossgrave Partnership) or Charles McCarry’s The Last Supper – so ambitiously titled but with all the human interest of a computer or a ventriloquist’s dummy. Charles McCarry must not be confused with Edgar Bergen’s famous doll, Charlie ...”

“... Cardenio – have turned on this possibility, and there has also been an unconvincing attempt by Charles Hamilton to prove that it survives as the anonymous playscript known as The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, which is more sensbly attributed to Thomas Middleton. There is no sign that Theobald had any specific knowledge of the earlier Cardenio text, records of ...”

“... new novel, Fire Down Below is the third volume of a trilogy, the other parts being Rites of Passage and Close Quarters. The trilogy is about a voyage to Sydney in 1813, and a bald, merely literal account might run like this ... On the first page the hero appears, Edmund FitzHenry Talbot, an unformed young man of good family who is going out to help ...”

“... Charles James Fox was early hailed as ‘the phenomenon of the age’: an Infant Phenomenon like his chief opponent and perfect foil, William Pitt, who, Fox’s mother is said to have predicted, would be ‘a thorn in Charles’s side as long as he lives’. David Hume, encountering Fox at 16 during one of his formative visits to Paris, was startled by his intellectual power and maturity and already foresaw him as ‘a very great acquisition to the publick’, if the lure of a life of cosmopolitan dissipation, already strong on him, did not distract him ...”

“... Roger de Piles noted, ‘took his time to draw a face when it had its best looks on.’ He painted Charles I’s Queen, Henrietta Maria, as a handsome woman – without, it would seem, losing the likeness. Yet her niece, who knew her first from the painting, was surprised to find the Queen ‘a little woman with long, lean arms, crooked shoulders and teeth ...”

“... captured and held to ransom, and from time to time Singapore traders who risked the Palawan passage to China found themselves in difficulties. Fortunately, there was a solution. In 1825, Parliament had passed an Act providing for bounties to be paid to Royal Navy officers who captured or killed or even drove off pirates. The intended targets were ...”

“... most remarkable recent acquisitions. Dickens was certainly familiar with the paintings of Charles Eastlake, the keeper of the National Gallery between 1843 and 1847. Eastlake was the leading British painter of fierce brigands and distressed contadine – the latter more convincing than the former – and had sent many examples to London during his ...”

“... use the same subtitle. The Waves, or The World of School, War and Peace, or The World of School, A Passage to India, or ... ? Brighton Rock? Le Grand Meaulnes? A clear case would be Brideshead Revisited, where Brideshead is obviously the name of the school itself. Even today, almost everyone has the school experience, at whatever sort of institution; and ...”

“... for a vet’s war novel seems, if not unpatriotic, then at least peevish and small-minded,’ Ron Charles wrote in his Washington Post review, before gently hinting at the truth: that this is an interesting novel, and in many ways a good one, which is blighted by some very obvious weaknesses. The title comes from a ‘Traditional US Army Marching ...”

“... composed in Paris more than ten years ago by Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud, Edoardo Sanguineti and Charles Tomlinson has recently been published here. This work, the result of five days’ collaboration in the basement of the Hôtel St Simon on the left Bank, has both oriental and occidental ancestry. The ceremonial meeting of poets to enact a ritual of ...”

“... accurate, reference to the trust deed was eliminated by the vice-chancellor, who substituted this passage: ‘Within the convergence policy the university has allowed significant autonomy to the institute recognising both its geographical location and its individualised cataloguing position.’ He then forwarded the document to Crewe as if it was entirely my ...”

“... in her day-to-day life, the tension remained palpable many years afterwards. According to Charles Bradlaugh’s daughter, Hypatia, ‘she was the most tactless person I ever knew.’ But even for those who disliked her methods, denied her inspiration and opposed her opinions, there was something about her which compelled admiration. To Nehru, who had ...”

“... a war between king and parliament but a war between parliament and its papist enemies.’ But when Charles, raising his army, removed from the shires the only arms with which they could defend themselves against the expected Popish insurrection, he seemed finally to demonstrate that the conspiracy had reached the heart of the Court. In this interpretation ...”