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“... Nation’, in which she shows Spenser’s literary heirs George Wither, William Browne and the MP Christopher Brooke co-ordinating political with poetic pressure on the Crown at moments of political turmoil in the 1620s. Or there is 1667, when Marvell’s Last Instructions to a Painter, and plays by Sir Robert Howard and the Earl of Orrery, seized on the hope ...”

“... the trade-union struggles, or was brought about by the cataclysm of 1914-1918. Another article, by Christopher Howard, details the Labour Party’s failure in the 1920s to expand local organisation and mass membership. It was the familiar story of small dedicated groups whose exertions ‘bore no little resemblance to the labours of Sisyphus’, and ...”

“... forms of criticism. Among the most deep and distinguished of this last kind of interpreter is Christopher Ricks, whose previous books include Milton’s Grand Style, Keats and Embarrassment, T.S. Eliot and Prejudice and Beckett’s Dying Words. Dylan’s Visions of Sin is the culmination of at least three decades’ critical engagement with the songs of ...”

“... look back with pride and relish. A few pages later on, we find Royle omitting an account of Dr Johnson in Edinburgh on the grounds that the story is too familiar to bear repetition: but this is a tactic, a turn of the head, to prepare us for a dismissal of James Boswell. Truly, of all the nationalisms, the literary kind is the most petty and the least ...”

“... Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford and a substantial shareholder, and of the ‘Thoughts of Sir Christopher Wren concerning the distribution of the New River water’ (set out in full in an appendix). Wren gives a clear, detailed and critical account of errors in the early technology and his view as to the most cost-effective motive power. The choice was ...”

“... or figurehead can be seen in the wide-ranging interviews, essays and speeches collected by Christopher De Santis in Let America Be America Again. His title is borrowed from a poem of the mid-1930s, which largely focuses on those for whom the American dream is a hoax (‘There’s never been equality for me,/Nor freedom in this “homeland of the ...”

“... he is sighted in London in May 1612, giving evidence in a lawsuit involving his former landlord Christopher Mountjoy, and again in March 1613 when he signed the mortgage deed on a property in the Blackfriars.* The two performances in 1613 bring Cardenio close to the Shakespeare-Fletcher Henry VIII, which was first performed at the Globe in June 1613. It was ...”

“... The implication, perhaps, is that the 1980s were judged by the two editors, Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks, to be likely to rate correctness of language above its political and social implications, while the 1990s will reverse these priorities. There is little point in taking issue with this, since in practice such divisions don’t hold fast: most ...”

“... of him, are full of the comedy of getting it slightly wrong with the Master, like Boswell with Johnson. When, at their first lunch, Eliot asked the young man what he wanted to be, Spender replied ingenuously: ‘To be a poet.’ ‘I can understand your wanting to write poems,’ Eliot responded, ‘but I don’t quite know what you mean by “being a ...”

“... of the old type of literary journalist, those who numbered among them Fielding, Goldsmith, Johnson, Smollett, Hazlitt, Pritchett’, and that everything was turning against him. The critics and reviewers now making their reputations ‘were men like Frank Kermode and Christopher Ricks, who were academics ...”

“... and James Boswell, but also by landowners, clerics and society hostesses – Hester Thrale, Samuel Johnson’s confidante, owned several jestbooks and comic miscellanies. In this context it becomes easier – though still not entirely easy – to understand the characteristic stance of the jestbooks towards class and gender. Some anecdotes – not many ...”

“... and timeless. Smith bangs away at the lavish veneration post-war critics have bestowed on Samuel Johnson as a great authoritative grammarian of written English. There’s plainly a controversial aspect to what both are doing, but also a welcome constructiveness. Publishers are flooding the market with rival interpretations, quick to write and easy to ...”

“... remembered my name without making a patronising show of it, and stayed to tell a good story about Christopher Hill and John Sparrow, and of how he’d been the unwitting agent of a quarrel between them, while ignoring an ambitious and possessive American professor who kept yelling ‘Eye-zay-ah! Eye-zay-ah!’ from across the room. (‘Yes,’ he murmured at ...”

“... the ear with some splendid novelty than awaken those ideas that slumber in the heart’ – Samuel Johnson, who in a page or two of unanswerable analysis clarifies the reasons why a poet whom he both loved and respected could not conceal ‘the difficulty which he found in exhibiting the genuine operations of the heart’. The key word is ...”

“... the campaign began, two of his leading cabinet ministers – Michael Gove the slyest and Boris Johnson the most popular of his colleagues, neither of them close to the ERG, both actuated by career rather than conviction – declared themselves for Leave.In parliamentary terms, Remain still had a winning hand, since Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid ...”