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“... her own research. Think how knee-capped biographers of Stoppard’s contemporaries Alan Bennett or Simon Gray might feel, faced with the life told in the dazzling diaries. Which is not to say that Stoppard has been costive about discussing his work. His speaking voice is familiar – so familiar that you hear the snag of his blurred ‘R’ while reading the ...”

“... In the days since Sir Geoffrey Howe’s resignation I have had a strong sense, not so much of history being made, as of history being invented: all the actors in this drama seem to be declaiming their parts as much for the history books as for the audience. That is true also of those whose duty it is to watch the drama and criticise the actors ...”

“... of the Welsh ‘father of English landscape’, Richard Wilson, curated by Martin Postle and Robin Simon. It is a magnificent show, the first on this scale for more than thirty years. It will be at Cardiff until 26 October, and it is accompanied by a sumptuous catalogue, the fullest, most faithfully reproduced collection of colour reproductions of Wilson’s ...”

“... to hunt down French novels on the Left Bank. In most un-Tory fashion, he formed an immediate and strong attachment to the French Socialist leader of the Popular Front, Léon Blum, who, to Eden’s delight, allowed him to browse in and borrow from his own large private library. It is doubtful if any other Tory MP snatched the time to read and reread ...”

“... horror, jeopardise, imperil, vulnerable, panic abound. Only pages into The Humbling we hear that Simon Axler, a celebrity actor, is ‘awash with terror and fear’. In each book a close acquaintance of the central character dies unexpectedly in a way quite unconnected with the main events. Roth asks how we can live a full life given the precariousness of ...”

“... as gatekeeper for the commercial publisher, keeping his corridors clear of unwanted petitioners. Simon and Schuster (motto: ‘there’s no such thing as a good book that doesn’t sell’) offer the following typical disincentive to intending authors: All unsolicited manuscripts will be returned. Only manuscripts submitted by agents or recommended to us by ...”

“... of strike ballots held under the 1984 Trade Union Act resulted in votes for industrial action, Simon Deakin comments that the Government became ‘conscious that the 1984 balloting laws had backfired.’ In fact, the figure of 90 per cent of ballots for strike action was not a result of the failure of the 1984 Act, but of its success in forcing union ...”

“... coalitions. They dislike the negotiations required to set them up and believe them inimical to ‘strong’ government. Our electoral system is designed to minimise the need for them, and since 1945 even minority governments have been exceptional. Only one, James Callaghan’s, was based on an agreement with another party, and the collapse of the Lib-Lab Pact ...”

“... its moment, being published soon after Cripps was ejected from the War Cabinet. Eric Estorick, a strong admirer, wrote two, the second of which (published in 1949) was widely read. Both Strauss and Estorick were, as Clarke puts it, ‘partisan’ and made use of ‘selective access’ to Cripps’s private papers. His widow, Dame Isobel, a vigilant guardian ...”

“... Life (1989). Gould discussed the bizarre fossils uncovered by the Cambridge palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris in an outcrop of rock in the Canadian Rockies, known as the Burgess Shale. The shale was formed 511 million years ago, in the period when animal life was first emerging. Buried within it Conway Morris found the fossils of extraordinary ...”

“... World leader with a penchant for stealing from the state, ruled from 1974 to 1979, and took the strong statist line that was popular during the boom years. The rights to oil extraction were taken away from Shell, Exxon and other foreign companies, and state funds were poured into industrial development, to the applause of left-wing nationalists ...”

“... playing a central role in the – by French standards – market-friendly Fondation Saint-Simon. Together with Furet, he celebrated the exhaustion in the 1980s of both communism and Gaullism. By 1989, the bicentenary of the Revolution, what remained was a moderate république du centre.In 2001, Rosanvallon was given a chair at the country’s most ...”

“... of France. Now the Foreign Office needs to know whether he or the other man was the traitor, and Simon Milson is dispatched to holiday at the suspect’s villa and plumb him. Arrived there, both Milson and the novel itself are sharply and guardedly observant, and if the book is spare, it is spare as an animal on the scent would need to be, taking ...”

“... struggle between the Soviet Union and the Allies’.Fitzpatrick has always been drawn to strong arguments, and she makes one here. She credits two factors – a deepening Cold War antagonism that disposed the Western Allies to ‘rebrand’ these DPs as victims of communism, and the ‘agency’ of DPs themselves – for an unusually swift and ...”

“... by two of the century’s most ruthless and insouciant planners, Lenin and Stalin. ‘Stalin,’ Simon Clarke writes in the collection of neo-Marxist essays about the whirlwind which has hit Soviet workers, sought to overcome the economic weakness of his regime by expanding heavy industry as rapidly as possible. He sought to broaden the social base of his ...”