Search Results

“... but they give themselves away when they do. Moby-Dick avoids anything too obvious by devising the white whale as an enormous marine pallet, which is then stacked with anxieties about God and nature and human ambition, offset from time to time by Ishmael’s debunkings (‘Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a ...”

“... of news pages and bad for advertisers, yet he would work only for the Magazine and its Art Editor, Michael Rand. Wyndham believed, on the contrary, that people liked reading about diverting, strange, glamorous subjects – and that glamour should not be taken seriously. He was also writing pieces in his own highly original style – pieces that were often ...”

“... In the Californian Sierra, ‘the presence of an atmosphere is hardly recognised, and the thin, white, bodiless light of the morning comes to the peaks and glaciers as a pure spiritual essence, the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.’ Canoeing along the ice-cliffs of coastal Alaska he feels the same: ‘bays full of hazy ...”

“... of the kings of France, trade routes to Islam, routes of Viking invasions – thus, so, black and white, and not otherwise. What lies behind it all? History of this kind maximises one’s information, minimises doubt. Its authors are pressed into shorthand statements, which often invite one tacitly to assume that things have not changed very much since the ...”

“... its wet, warm arms, showering her with thousands of greedy, rough kisses, blinding her with the white zigzag explosions of uncountable lightning bolts, deafening her with ear-splitting rolls of thunder ... Then already hopelessly soaked, she stood up straight, offering her body to the powerful surge of water. For an instant the thought crossed her mind to ...”

“... were bared almost to the hips where the while fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down ... Her bosom was as a bird’s, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.   She was alone and still, gazing ...”

“... dressing? Val, the friend of British nationalists, of course.There aren’t enough members of the white race’s vanguard for the uniforms to come from a factory. They have to be home-made. The blue BM crossed-circle came as a machine-embroidered patch, but she was the one who had to get it to work on a khaki shirt, who had to make the jacket and the ...”

“... first time I saw, or looked repeatedly at, a painting by Frank Auerbach was in the art historian Michael Podro’s living room – it must have been in 1968. The painting was Primrose Hill, Autumn Morning. I’d barely heard of Auerbach at that point (modern painting for me was French and American), and I certainly didn’t have a clue who had done the ...”

“... Beirut, escaping the sun to browse the books on politics in the Virgin Megastore. A stack of Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country is in front of me. Across the street is the tent city that protesters against the Syrian presence in Lebanon pitched soon after the Valentine’s Day assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister. A few ...”

“... and violence, of prostitutes and pimps, of tenements and penitentiaries – the world of the ‘white slave trade’ – but it is to here that the trail keeps winding back, to London’s East End in 1888, to the scene in that bedroom in Miller’s Court, and to the unanswered question which is at least part of the Ripper’s enduring fascination: who was ...”

“... two thousand metres above sea level. In spring, the distinctive green columns produce a large white and yellow blossom, which blooms at night and is pollinated by hummingbirds and bats. Like many plants, the San Pedro cactus converts amino acids into compounds known as alkaloids. The evolutionary purpose of San Pedro’s most famous alkaloid, the ...”

“... a remarkably handsome newspaper, much more spacious in its page layouts and crisper in its black/white contrasts than its rival, the Sunday Times, which looked untidy and grey by comparison. Throughout the 1950s it was the dominant ‘quality’ Sunday paper, certainly in its cultural and political influence among the young if not always in terms of its ...”

“... in Staffordshire, a theme park of redundant symbols: lions, bears, eagles. There is even a ghostly white, blindfolded man who Peter Ashley thinks might be a late tribute to soldiers executed for walking away from the battle. The next station, on our walk to the west, leaves us frustrated. The marzipan-and-betel-juice grandeur of St Pancras is ...”

“... part we were finally installed on seats in front of the pavilion, the soothing sight of green and white displayed before us. Although hardly an enthusiast by temperament, Frank was a cricket-lover, always reading the scores in the sports pages and watching the TV highlights. He had played regularly while a lecturer at Reading in the 1950s (‘I was never any ...”

“... were doctors trying to cure him.)This, coupled with Clinton’s ostentatious membership of an all-white golf-club, strikes me as a more pressing issue of morals and ‘character’ than l’affaire Flowers. But Clinton, who at first looks as if he welcomes a change of subject, doesn’t care for this one. He turns his back and marches away. Later on ...”