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“... often jeering response. Only a few answered the insults in kind: Empson’s correspondence with Philip Hobsbaum, who was his pupil but disagreed with some of the basic tenets, is full of rude words and anger on both sides. In this case the insults were part of what Empson called ‘my long attempt to improve the mind of Hobsbaum’, and Hobsbaum, defying ...”

“... had to come from somewhere. Deprived of revenue approved by Parliament, Charles resorted to a gross expansion of ship money, which did not require parliamentary approval, at least not in its original application to coastal towns, but created a hell of a row when he expanded it to cover inland areas. Henry, for his part, came to rely on other ...”

“... they are, can’t help not coming up to. The second or critical section is extremely strong: John Gross on the Oxford Book, George Hartley on the early publishing, Clive James on the jazz criticism as well as the poems, Alan Brownjohn on the novels, Christopher Ricks on Larkin’s poetic style and structure, Seamus Heaney on his idealism, and others. But in ...”

“... publish his poems, but broke down again and failed to get a degree. Student friends, who included Philip Hobsbaum and Ted Hughes, registered that Redgrove was impressively unusual. Hobsbaum thought he bore ‘a resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster, only better dressed’. Harry Guest recalls him carrying ‘a swordstick with him’ – like a Mr Hyde ...”

“... which is said to have accommodated a thousand spectators, it was built in 1600 by the impresario Philip Henslowe, worried about falling revenues at his Southwark playhouses, the Rose and the Swan, due to competition from Shakespeare’s company at the newly opened Globe. Henslowe’s partner in the Fortune venture was his son-in-law, the actor Edward ...”

“... sharply towards a hard Brexit. And she did so without consulting her cabinet. Her chancellor, Philip Hammond, listened to her declare at the Tory Party Conference in October 2016 that after Brexit, Britain would accept no European laws, would take control of its own immigration policy, would have its own trade deal with the EU and would be outside the ...”

“... They were supplied forthwith: Titian’s ‘Rape of Europa’; Rembrandt’s 1636 self-portrait; a Philip IV by Velazquez; Rubens’s Earl of Arundel – all for what seemed at the time phenomenal, that is to Say, ‘American’ prices. The proceeds from this stupendous bonanza enabled Berenson and his wife to instal themselves in I Tatti, already dreaming ...”

“... as just an author, in the way they think of authors even as popularly eminent as Salman Rushdie or Philip Roth. He’s a trendy-essay-topic catch-all, a figure half fact and half popular-culture fantasy, forever turning up in conspiracy theories and comic strips and on the World Wide Web. He’s an enigma, a beatnik hero. He is, in short, a cult.‘Learned ...”

“... This unanimity should therefore be worth looking into, especially in the case of work like Philip Larkin’s, always more reserved and elusive than it seems. I want to consider his writing in juxtaposition with that of Kingsley Amis, close friend of the poet’s for over forty years; and to begin with Amis’s recent Booker Prize-winning novel. The ...”

“... joke) with a medallion of the Queen hanging round his neck and positioned over his heart. Philip Francis told Burke the account was ‘pure foppery’. Jefferson said the real-life queen bore little resemblance to ‘the rhapsodies of Burke’. They might or might not have agreed with recent commentators who see Marie Antoinette’s nakedness, like ...”

“... banished from the room. What do you ask ‘the Lady Macbeth of the Rwandan genocide’, as Philip Gourevitch called her? How do you approach a conversation with someone who’s been portrayed as the latter-day incarnation of a legendary sorceress in Rwandan dynastic history? Or as the ultimate ‘Hutu power’ extremist, who some believed was behind ...”

“... hard to believe that the same man effected the beautiful poise of the critical prose and the gross flat-footedness of the heroic drama. These are variations that perhaps depend on the new implications of professionalism, of literature pursued as labour. It took an extraordinary mix of qualities to make a writer succeed in the second half of the Century ...”

“... South Africa, embodied white supremacy not democracy. Muhammad Ali saw Palestine as an instance of gross racial injustice. So, today, do the leaders of the United States’s oldest and most prominent Black Christian denominations, who have accused Israel of genocide and asked Biden to end all financial as well as military aid to the country.In 1967, Baldwin ...”

“... marital devotion and hints of what was to come. Early in December 1884, he wrote a brief note to Philip Griffiths, a 20-year-old from a wealthy family in Birmingham: ‘My dear Philip, I have sent a photo of myself for you to the care of Mr MacKay which I hope you will like and in return for it you are to send me one of ...”

“... But when one considers the involving moral and imaginative power of the whole, the remark seems a gross understatement; it seems to miss, even, things about the poem of specific interest to a biographer, concerning Eliot’s evolving moral consciousness in the years of his first marriage. I am not proposing a simple ‘biographical’ reading of this or any ...”