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“... foreboding. In November 1982 he wrote to Motion about a dinner held for Thatcher by the historian Hugh Thomas and attended by writers he thought she might admire (Larkin, Isaiah Berlin, V.S. Pritchett, Mario Vargas Llosa and Anthony Powell, among others), which Larkin had found tough going. ‘The Thatcher dinner was pretty grisly. Even now I shudder and moan ...”

“... than it did in the US army’s penal system. The opening paragraphs of the relevant chapter in Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era (1971) read like an extract from the script for a Hollywood biopic (‘they existed from today’s exercise liberty to tomorrow’s, from this meal to the next: the heavy padlock opened, the door swung a little to admit the tin plate ...”

“... Indeed, he complained about plans to publish some of the correspondence of his late friend David Hume, because it would encourage hacks and hucksters to ‘set about rummaging the cabinets of all those who had ever received a scrap of paper from him. Many things would be published not fit to see the light to the great mortification of all those who ...”

“... rebellion and revolt to the economic and political constraints imposed by feudal elites. In 1959 Hugh Trevor-Roper replaced Hobsbawm’s economic crisis with a political/fiscal one, a struggle between the centralising efforts of princely courts and government, on the one hand, and provincial and local powers on the other. In 1965 Hobsbawm and ...”

“... more compelling or beguiling on sexual or other topics, have totally vanished. In E.F. Benson’s David Blaise, ‘young, pink flesh’ appears under wet, black knickerbockers in an open squash court: yet where is David now? The Hill, by H.A. Vachell, a tale of true friendship, drew hot tears, from me at least: it is still ...”

“... concept of national loyalty, it is possible to read much of his verse as a protest against what Hugh Haughton terms ‘the indignity of King Log’. Haughton argues that Hill seems to yearn ‘for real authority and real title, the kind of transcendence embodied in a language of kingship derived from the past and earlier power-relations’. It is a serious ...”

“... in as about the man himself. In that respect, it reminded me of Rupert Hart-Davis’s biography of Hugh Walpole, which can be read with pleasure and profit again and again though it is not entirely easy to see why. Neither Hugh Walpole nor Duff Cooper (who turns out to have been Rupert Hart-Davis’s uncle) were particularly ...”

“... spanning almost forty years: on Basil Bunting, Charles Tomlinson, Ted Hughes, Robert Graves, Hugh MacDiarmid, J.M. Synge, David Jones, George Steiner, Geoffrey Hill, Elizabeth Daryush and the fraternity of poets anthologised by Andrew Crozier and Tim Longville in A Various Art. It also includes a number of Davie’s ...”

“... a roster of the British writers who have received the most international recognition: Bunting, David Jones, Hugh MacDiarmid and W.S. Graham are just a few of them. The work of these poets, and their successors in Other, is not inaccessible; it is ‘differently immediate’. Both the Prynne Poems and the anthology are ...”

“... manifesto that came to be known as the Limehouse Declaration. When Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and I met together that morning, we were clear in our intention: in breaking the mould of contemporary politics, we would create a new radical centre, push the Labour Party into third place, change the electoral system and usher in an era of ...”

“... the Party so badly between 1929 and 1931. Her father, Evan Durbin – a friend and mentor of Hugh Gaitskell and a junior minister in the post-war Labour Government, who was drowned in a bathing accident while still in his early forties – was one of the outstanding members of the group. But New Jerusalems is not a pious memoir, written in the spirit of ...”

“... idea that Richard was sincere in his concessions to the rebels and reluctant to withdraw them. Sir Hugh Segrave, Richard’s new treasurer, told the parliament of November 1381 that the concessions had been made under duress and the king had revoked them as soon as he could: And now the king wishes to know the will of you, my lords, prelates, lords and commons ...”

“... day’s NEC elections. It was a bitter, ugly and exhausting Conference. Herbert Morrison and Hugh Dalton, who had helped to carry the Labour Party through the wartime coalition and the Attlee Government, lost their places on the National Executive to Harold Wilson and Richard Crossman, the candidates of the Left. Dalton sulked, but Morrison made a shrewd ...”

“... Hugh Trevor-Roper, who died in January 2003 shortly after his 89th birthday, had several of the qualities cherished in Britain’s so-called ‘national treasures’. His schoolboyish playfulness and relish of mischief never deserted him, nor did an unerring compass in matters of style, which assured an elegant, and seemingly effortless, command of language and bearing ...”

“... the controls rendered budgetary policy totally irrelevant. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, felt himself quite capable of taking the decisions without consulting either his ministerial colleagues, or taking advice from the head of the Section, and when, in 1947, Meade was obliged by illness to relinquish his post, it was through no fault of ...”