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“... 1946, only to be expelled by a reactionary faculty – he had dared to prefer Cézanne to Augustus John. Forced into national service for 18 slack months, he spent most of the time reading, Joyce above all, and Ulysses became the subject of a first suite of etchings; old media attracted him as much as new. ‘Hamilton was fascinated by the skill, the ...”

“... bite like a dog’, otherwise they become ‘an affront’. Like his contemporaries, della Casa took for granted that laughter was mainly an expression of scorn – ‘it being a mark of greater contempt to laugh at a person, than to do him any real injury’. As the Elizabethan humanist Thomas Wilson wrote, ‘the occasion of laughter and the mean that ...”

“... of Dali and Céline, yet to have strained out any relish or abandon from the mixture. He took his pleasures sadly. Impersonalised or even brutalised gay sex, while it had been tried before all right, was something he both cottoned to and helped to proselytise for. The essential figure in the world of the Factory was either a runaway boy or a ...”

“... attitude of one who is about to play; he was probably a banker’s son. In 1769 Wright painted Mrs John Ashton. The Quakerish modesty of her black and white dress is belied by its gloss. Her late husband had been in the slave trade. Mrs Sarah Clayton (a courtesy ‘Mrs’, she was unmarried) held a leading position in the coal trade in Liverpool; she points to ...”

“... which made him bewray his credit’. Historians have wondered what form this literary laxative took. Some suggest that Jonson is guyed as big morose Ajax in Troilus and Cressida (with, according to Honigmann, the diminutive epigrammist John Weever as Thersites). Others say Jonson is a model for Jaques, the embittered ...”

“... long-standing scientific and medical concerns. Regulatory action became more likely as the press took up the call for anti-obesity measures. Taking their case to the Department of Health and Human Services, the sugar lobbyists received a sympathetic hearing from the director of the Office of Global Affairs, William Steiger, a godson of the first President ...”

“... not only because he worked hard at them, but also because he listened to advice, especially from John Gardner but also, more remotely, from Hemingway, Chekhov and V.S. Pritchett. One of the things he learned was the need for arduous revision, draft after draft. Another lesson was that the writer needs to trust the tale. Lawrence notoriously advised the ...”

“... had no idea of the aggressive manner of this mob. Outraged by the elusiveness of their prey, they took to publishing allegations about Blunt which had no foundation at all: notably that he was responsible for the deaths of 49 wartime Dutch special agents, a story the Sunday Telegraph refused to retract and which is still repeated.Some latent reservoir of ...”

“... contact with London than with one another. When the First Continental Congress convened in 1774, John Adams reported that the delegates were ‘strangers’, unfamiliar with each other’s ideas and experiences. What then explains the road to independence? While most accounts of the coming of the Revolution focus on protests in eastern cities against British ...”

“... She hasn’t even managed to persuade Sammy Wilson to wear a mask. When a Ballymena councillor, John Carson, said the pandemic was God’s judgment on Northern Ireland for introducing abortion and same-sex marriage, Foster failed to discipline him. When the same councillor alleged that Covid vaccines were made from the stem cells of aborted foetuses – a ...”

“... The story of the burning of the Greatest Library of the Ancient World by the Arabs is well known: John the Grammarian, a Coptic priest living in Alexandria at the time of the Arab conquest in 641 AD, came to know ‘Amr, the Muslim general who conquered the city. The men were each other’s intellectual peers, and John became the Emir’s trusted adviser ...”

“... admittedly, had good reason to emphasise the enactment of Richard’s overthrow, which they took as evidence of the rebels’ seditious intent. But Coke and Bacon were only reproducing the testimony supplied by Meyrick and Phillips, who had no such motive. The only play that could fit the surviving descriptions of it would be one that both centred on ...”

“... department, asked me how I was doing. ‘They opened up my belly last night,’ I grumbled, ‘took my appendix out, closed me up with staple pins and left.’ It hurt. ‘Well, you sound like you’re all right now,’ he said rather bluntly. ‘I’m sure you can make it to the Herzliya Conference in two days’ time. There’s a panel about Iran or ...”

“... perfectly squared, without the least winding or washboarding – flat as a sheet of plate glass. John Hersey, The Walnut Door three four knock at the door – imagine the door as subject no mystery just a coathanger a formal object on which for some reason you’ve to drape its own history – how it began – is began better than started? – began as the ...”

“... of sterile lesbian passion, and Mme Roberts satisfactorily preserved her reputation. Pabst took immense care over physical details. Louise Brooks, who was used to choosing her own costumes (Paramount had let her play a manicurist in a $500 beaded evening dress), found Pabst selecting everything – ‘from an ermine coat to my girdle’. His final ...”