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“... photograph of Twombly in Rome, standing by the hand of the colossus of Constantine. In 1778, Henry Fuseli drew himself crestfallen, seated by the foot and hand of the colossus, and called it ‘The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments’. His figure – lightly sketched – is almost invisible beside the giant remnants of the ...”

“... the widest spreading, the noblest of the trees common in London streets, parks and squares.The green tide is rising because more trees are planted than are cut down – or so it seems to the casual eye – and because few are trimmed to size, fewer than would be the case in France. The height of the tide will depend on taste and on what is often still ...”

“... Back then the land was ‘fulfild of fayerye’, and the elf queen danced with her company in the green meadows. But that’s all over now. The elves and fairies have been driven out by the friars, who have blanketed the country with prayers and blessings. Women can go anywhere in safety, because there is no ‘incubus’ left lurking in the bushes except for ...”

“... like Larkin or Housman manages unexpectedly to strike an all-responsive chord; when, in fine, as Henry James would say, by exciting themselves they excite others. Like the higher pornography, the higher self-pity – vital to any bestseller – is an important ingredient in Larkin’s popularity. There is nothing specialised about the excitement. One does ...”

“... of exquisite perfection. In it lies Sir William Wilcote, MP for Oxfordshire under Richard II and Henry IV, who died in 1411. He is shown in alabaster armour, with a collar of SS (the Lancastrian badge), his eagle coat of arms on his jupon and a chaplet round his helm. Beside him his wife with a rich head-dress. A noble tomb. His son John was also many times ...”

“... which is the lachrymose and androgynous Mourning Figure sculpted by August St Guldens for Henry Adams’s unhappy wife Clover (whose name always puts me in mind of an overworked pit pony). And there in the grass is a stone slab, bearing the names and dates of birth of Vidal and his lifelong companion Howard Austen. The hyphens that come after the ...”

“... word for word. Behind Bosanquet’s analysis, however, lies the overwhelming influence of T.H. Green. As Bosanquet acknowledges in the chapter I have been quoting, he makes ‘great use’ of the analysis of freedom offered by Green in his Principles of Political Obligation, originally published in 1886. ...”

“... and maple yellow. The subjects are painted in umbers, browns and white, with touches of lettuce-green.’ The panels show vases, a classical-looking head of a woman, musical instruments, books, fruit and flowers. Tiles were made for the fireplace, and dots painted along the edge of the mantelpiece; Woolf later wrote to her sister asking ‘how to make ...”

“... Boston and immediately concluded that William James should marry her. In one version of the story, Henry James Sr returned from a meeting and announced to those at home that he had seen William’s future bride. Another version attributes the discovery to the philosopher Thomas Davidson, who invited his friend to meet ‘the woman you ought to marry’. It may ...”

“... conceit of setting up the king on top of it’ (George I in Roman dress) inspired a rhyme: When Henry VIII left the Pope in the lurch, The Protestants made him the head of the church, But George’s good subjects, the Bloomsbury people Instead of the church, made him head of the steeple. Three great building projects are underway. Almost complete, the ...”

“... Stevenson found the core of his talent. It all started with a spirited exchange in print with Henry James. In September 1884, when Stevenson was new to that oasis of convalescents, he picked up a copy of Longman’s Magazine, which carried James’s essay ‘The Art of Fiction’. He knew James only at a distance, and admired him. Stevenson, who had ...”

“... at its core. So the narrowing of focus in Mitchell’s new novel is to be welcomed. Black Swan Green is set in a village in Worcestershire, England’s ‘most boring county’, as the narrator tells a girl from Blackburn he meets on holiday in Lyme Regis. It is concerned not with globalisation, artificial intelligence, cloning, the legacy of colonialism ...”

“... bisect the woman’s face, its two halves connected only by her red lips. The lower half is a pale green crescent, framed by a cascade of blonde hair; the upper section, coloured the same pale purple as her body, is unmistakeably the shape of an erect penis. ‘Girl before a Mirror’ (1932) In limiting themselves to a single year the curators have ...”

“... at Bafta. These sorry occasions have always been best forgotten; now their memory must be kept green against the possible arrival of the men in white coats. 19 January. Watch a video of Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), the first time, I think, that I have watched it all the way through since I saw it as a child at a cinema in ...”

“... to be too afraid of pleasure. There are other hobby-horses, such as the pernicious influence of Henry James upon English fiction. James sinned by turning the eyes of the best authors ‘away from the needs, passions and immortal longings of humanity to dwell on the trivial curiosities of sheltered gentlefolk’, on ‘little social problems of no real ...”