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“... would be enhanced in time for the Nixon-Brezhnev summit. But the plan was excessively vague. Edward Heath was not responsive to the idea of a special relationship with America – he was more interested in cultivating relations with his European allies, especially France; the Germans under Brandt were more concerned with their Ostpolitik; and the ...”

“... and the unions and Robert Taylor on Woodcock – it is contradicted. Andrew Taylor writes that Edward Heath made a sustained effort to convince the unions to become partners in a corporate state after the failure of his lurch towards the free market in 1972, and that Vic Feather was convinced the offer was genuine (although he failed, as Woodcock ...”

“... started off with: ‘And we are standing on a historical platform today, because on this very heath took place the great debates that made this country a democracy.’ There were two, three thousand people at that rally, and I think that was the first time I’d heard a political leader giving the audience a history lesson. In 1967 I went to North Vietnam ...”

“... road out east to Wellington, a few miles from the centre of Freetown, was good. I took it with Dr Edward Nahim, a consultant psychologist and lecturer supervising a rehabilitation project for former under-age combatants in rebel militias, government forces and semi-autonomous units. There was room for roughly a hundred young people on the property taken over ...”

“... regarded at the time as one of the Tory Party’s brightest hopes for the future. When he and Sir Edward Boyle were brought into the Cabinet by Macmillan on ‘the Night of the Long Knives’, it was with a flourish – the old showman’s theatrical salute to youth and brains. Joseph, as Minister of Housing and Local Government with a background in the ...”

“... In​ 1925, Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st earl of Iveagh, purchased Kenwood House, a neoclassical villa on the edge of Hampstead Heath and one of the finest surviving examples of the mature designs of Robert Adam. Two years later, Lord Iveagh died, bequeathing Kenwood to the nation, along with 63 Old Master and 18th-century British paintings from his own collection, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough and Reynolds, as an example of the house, and artistic holdings, of an 18th-century gentleman ...”

“... to join Europe and play our proper part there. Nevertheless, with the conspicuous exception of Ted Heath, most prime ministers have dithered between seeking to co-operate with Europe and accepting American domination, while inclining heavily towards the latter. Nobody is better qualified than Hugo Young to tell the sad tale of Britain’s fumblings with her ...”

“... this possibility was foreclosed by the spectacular rise of Thatcher herself in the mid-1970s. If Edward Heath’s reaction has been called the longest sulk in history, Joseph’s was surely the shortest. It was all over remarkably quickly. Until February 1974, Joseph and Thatcher had sat side by side in Heath’s ...”

“... which encourages a suspicion that devil-worshippers have crept in from some local blasted heath. The idea is supported by the fact that a relic, the mummified hand of Barabbas, has been stolen, presumably for use in a necromantic ritual. In this time of Reformation, the superstitions of Catholics and witches are deliberately conflated. Prior to ...”

“... and readies herself for the first bite. Where are we? If the taxi outside is anything to go by, Edward Burra’s The Snack Bar, an oil painting from 1930 in the Tate (but rarely shown), is set in Paris or Toulon or, plausibly, in a Frenchified Soho. Closer inspection reveals a Metro sign across the street, surely the clincher. But no: John ...”

“... country house with formal gardens, lakes and an extensive deer park. Lord Digby (1809-89) was Sir Edward St Vincent Digby, the earl’s son-in-law. Walton, the gamekeeper, was William Walton; according to the 1861 census, he was born around 1800 in Somerton, Somerset. Mansel-Pleydell informs us that Walton is ‘still living’, a detail perhaps included for ...”

“... about Hugh Kenner and commented: ‘This precipitates not Ooh but Ah.’ Let us indulge the King Edward Professor for a moment. Supposing critical judgments – and judgments about judgments – may be reduced to a series of sounds like ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’, what ‘direct’ and ‘personal’ vocal reaction is precipitated by Geoffrey Hill: Essays on his ...”

“... Reading Room, he marched with family, friends, acolytes and picnic baskets from Soho to Hampstead Heath. ‘A Sunday on Hampstead Heath,’ Wilhelm Liebknecht recalled, ‘was one of our greatest joys.’ The political exile’s greatest burden is incomprehension – of his hosts and by his hosts. He is where he is because ...”

“... or because nothing much is demanded of them by their creator. The hero of The Folding Star, Edward Manners, was alive in his misery, as he tramped through Bruges in search of the object of his desire, young Luc Altidore. Alex Nichols suffers in rather similar ways in The Spell, but it is difficult to care about him as one cared for ...”

“... gang, headed by a rascally rector, who murdered a Leicestershire magnate and robbed one of Edward I’s trailbaston judges, before going on to commit numerous robberies in Lincolnshire. The gang were brothers, well-connected enough to buy pardons from the Crown, or to atone by serving in the King’s Army, but fatally drawn to highway robbery. The ...”