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“... busy place. Like Nikolai Rostov, most soldiers experience it as strangely empty. Even on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, a British field artillery officer looking towards the German trenches could see ‘not a single soldier ... not a movement of any sort’. A British parachutist in combat in 1982 reported: ‘I didn’t really see any Argies ...”

“... Four score years is a long time to wait for the so-called ‘untold story’ of Passchendaele. Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson are Australian historians who tell us, a little loftily, that ‘Great War studies have yet to escape their protracted adolescence.’ Their adult investigation is reminiscent of those relentless inquiries into scams carried out by ...”

“... other animals are so stupid that his skill, though often praised, is hardly tested. One winter’s day, Isengrim tells the court, Reynard told the wolf’s wife that he would teach her to catch fish with her tail. When her tail was deep into the water, it froze; then Reynard raped her. Reynard denies this: ‘When I saw her stuck in the ice, I wanted to help ...”

“... on formulaic elements, but needs to be precisely adapted to the moment. In this respect dear old Robin in the 1960s Batman TV series was one of the best swearers, though his lips were never soiled with a common-or-garden profanity. He could combine ‘Holy’ with more or less anything in order to create his trademark ejaculations, which were always to the ...”

“... Gordon will go quietly, however rough the going gets, is badly mistaken. 12 May. For the second day running the spotlight is on the Tories. Not for them sordid little claims for bath plugs or plasma TVs. No, they’ve been at it on an altogether different scale, with outrageous claims for housekeepers, repairs to tennis courts, swimming-pools; there’s ...”

“... Rupert Murdoch ‘achieves more in half an hour than any other human being achieves in a whole day’; administering purple-faced, vein-distended half-hour-long bollockings on almost any pretext; creating front-page headlines like ‘FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER’; protesting his reasonableness, during negotiations about the move to Wapping, with the ...”

“... The notions that made their mark on the magazine were more individualist, radical-liberal ones. Robin Cook’s personal credo is more obviously New Statesmanly than Blair’s: ‘what attracted me to the Labour Party was not the values of collectivism but the values of individualism, of rebellion, of freedom, of liberation from the machinery of state ...”

“... barrier to grief: ‘A great while after my brother died my mother was wont to sit weeping every day. I trow that there is nobody which would not be sorry if he had seen her weeping.’ At Stanford Rivers in Essex, a funeral brass shows an infant in swaddling clothes. It was made to preserve the memory of Thomas Greville, who ‘died in his tender age’ in ...”

“... over the world, again and again, if rather apologetically, comes close to Harris’s conclusions. Robin Cohen’s article notes that ‘international migration’ has replaced Communism as a ‘key threat’ to Western security organisations such as Nato, and asks: ‘Are such organisations simply trying to stay in business? Does the world system of states ...”

“... in the minds of the actors that they remember, like Henry V at Agincourt, what feats they did that day.’ Never mind Agincourt, note the ‘little man’ and the reference to France. Why France? Are fathers different there from those on Clapham Common? Of course not, but ‘France’ not only tells us that Mrs Fordham has travelled but cloaks old Charlie ...”

“... svenska.’ ‘A Painted Field’ is the sombre, highly polished début of the Scottish poet, Robin Robertson, much of it taken up with atmospheric depictions of natural scenes. For a first book, it is of an unusually high standard, which seems to owe something to Robertson’s careful immersion in other poets’ techniques. The poems are saturated, for ...”

“... societies is away from the public funding of pensions and towards private, commercial provision. Robin Blackburn describes the finance companies selling pension schemes as a new form of tax farmer, offering dubious deals in return for tax subsidies and lavish commissions. The analogy indicates the tenor of his thinking: tax farmers contributed to the lack of ...”

“... do, how much will it cost the British and French public? Defending her record in Parliament on the day she resigned in 1990, Thatcher spoke in patriotic tones of how, with millions of people buying shares in former state industries, privatisation was giving ‘power back to the people’, and how competition at home and open markets in Europe would free ...”

“... and clowns, who entertained all the dignitaries, knights and ladies who visited his house every day to have their portraits painted. Moreover, he had lavish dishes prepared for them at his table, at the cost of thirty scudi a day ... he employed men and women who served as models for the portraits of the lords and ...”

“... Garden heist. We learn that three of the men who were arrested at gunpoint in Kent the other day are pensioners. Brian Reader is 76 and the owner of a second-hand car dealership called Pentire Cars. He is also the owner of the kind of moustache you used to see on ‘Wanted’ posters. While the nation hates terrorists and paedophiles, it rather likes ...”