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“... re- I re- I re- ! (then higher, panicking) I RE- ! My brother was snorting, pissing himself. The young judge gazed over his glasses, mystified, encouraging. His slight kindness turned the tap – words. Words, like w- w-w-w-w-w-W-W-W WATER shot out as if hosed, splattering meaning in the dropping well of conscience. ‘What did you say?’ – the ...”

“... other novels and stories. Such children are at the centre of William Trevor’s tenth novel and David Profumo’s first; or rather, Trevor seems to have chosen to place young Tom both centrally and peripherally (as children often are, in fiction and in life), while Profumo makes ...”

“... way of formalising it. Asked back in England what the retreat to Dunkirk had been like, a languid young officer is said to have replied: ‘My dear – the noise, and the people.’ As good an impression as any that could be devised from (in his case) normal social experience. The fragment of Beowulf known as ‘The Finnsburgh Episode’ provides a standard ...”

“... a photograph in Harper’s Bazaar and mentioned it to Howard. The image was of a smartly dressed young woman standing outside the door to a blood bank – it had a slightly vampiric quality. This was the start of what would be called ‘the Look’. The young woman was Betty Joan Perske, born in the Bronx in September ...”

“... Palestine has less connection with the modern world than with the picturesque towns engraved by David Roberts in the 19th century. Old men still talk about their orange groves and their old stone houses in Jaffa, remembering every tree and every stone, and one doesn’t have the heart to tell them that the houses have been bulldozed and the orchards have ...”

“... year before Bonnie and Clyde; he will have been eight when Chinatown appeared, and ten or so when David Bowie recorded the song that gives this book its title. Specktor’s mother was a screenwriter whose career was short-lived; later she was a drinker who snarled at her son for asking her to stop. By then she was divorced from his father, who was a leading ...”

“... was to be found in most advanced Amerindian societies, and usually took the form of offering young children to the earth gods to ensure good harvests. The Mexica persisted in this custom, propitiating Tlaloc, the god of rains, by cutting the throats of children at his feast. What is not clear is when the human heart became the chosen food of the sun and ...”

“... he settles. Sexual desire, in particular, is considered strange and regressive. He complains to a young woman, whom he finds quite attractive, that the local diet of bread and bean paste seems self-mortifying. She reproves his unbridled appetites, then startles him by asking how a wish ‘to grip me tight and push part of your body into me’ comports with ...”

“... the purposes of life now reigns in the thinking stratum of Chinese society, especially among the young. David Rice’s Dragon’s Brood is a marvellously fresh and immediate evocation of this confusion at what one might call the first level of perception – that of the serious visit. Rice is innocent of any real knowledge ...”

“... justice (who isn’t?). He is also, on some accounts, a victim: his unfortunate mentor at the LSE, David Held, has described the predicament the ostensibly reform-minded Saif found himself in after his father’s people had revolted as ‘the stuff of Shakespeare’, but that surely is letting everyone concerned off far too lightly. He may just be a ...”

“... Barnett mounts a vituperative attack on the CBCs, unearthing a priceless memo from David Cameron written in response to accusations that he lacked the common touch: ‘Please, operational grid, give me the right language.’ And he gives an acute analysis of the postwar transition from ‘the government of a whole society by a ...”

“... the writers we read, we do not believe such things about relative strangers – that beautiful young man at the gym, that horrible troll there – and neither, as a rule, do we believe them about celebrities. We believe from reading him that Oscar Wilde – in person – was both superficial and profound. Or we believe that Roland Barthes in person ...”

“... full of left-wing political feeling. The rise of Hitler had provoked many hitherto non-political young people to agitated concern about the future of Europe. The developing policy of appeasement; the ‘non-intervention’ policy of the British and French governments with respect to the Franco rebellion in Spain; the helpless feeling that the humane liberal ...”

“... and moved with his family to England at the age of eight. After a miserable period at Harrow, the young Sheridan settled with his family at Bath, where his father attempted to set up a Rhetorical and Grammatical Academy. Here Sheridan met Eliza Linley, rescued her from the unwelcome attentions of a soi-disant army captain, and eloped with her to France. On ...”

“... to Toulon’s naval installations, certainly devoted an unusual amount of attention to a circle of young female followers, with whom he frequently picnicked and danced in the countryside. Cadière, the poor daughter of an olive oil merchant who had died during her infancy, rapidly emerged as the ‘shining star’ of this coterie after the two met in ...”