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“... A sparkle of sunshine on the breakers, a dazzling gleam from the white foam, a warm sweet air, light and brightness and champagniness; altogether lovely. The way in which people lie about on the beach, their legs this way and their arms that, their hats over their eyes, their utter give-themselves-up expression of attitude is enough in itself, to make a ...”

“... one of the best essays in the collection, J.P. Stern’s on Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull in the light of Nietzschean views of metaphor and morality, should be concerned solely with German literature. It is principally by asking what a literary canon is that the editor has sought to give some sort of shape to her book, though in the process it becomes clear ...”

“... pup by most standards, but it feels like it’s already in overtime. The US Defense Secretary, Mr Donald ‘Rummy’ Rumsfeld, has just warned us that wearing down the Iraqi Army may take some time. Why does no one listen to him? Like most other politicians, he can, unexpectedly, utter a (belated) truth. George Bush has asked the Congress to stump up an extra ...”

“... houses, have been profoundly influential. One eloquent and stylish illustration of this is Donald Olsen’s book (another gratifying reprint), which begins where Rasmussen left off, by trying to assess the role of the great urban, aristocratic leasehold estates in the making of London’s fabric. Combining the power to plan with the inclination to do ...”

“... and caution. To no avail, however – and perhaps understandably. On Saturday, 11 January 1986, Donald Trelford, the editor of the Observer, had spent a lot of time closeted in the paper’s fourth-floor boardroom. Outside the Observer’s premises that afternoon stood a convoy of Rolls-Royces and other opulent vehicles. I am not suggesting the Sultan ...”

“... is a darting of the eye immediately down to Craft’s copious footnotes, which throw pencils of light back up to the mass of material. The glosses are more interesting, on the whole, as well as more readable (because more written) than the diaries. What isn’t glossed, one comes to realise, may well be insignificant or just too obscure; moreover, Craft’s ...”

“... that Sir Austin Robinson has been able to see it through from first to last, and the efforts of Donald Moggridge in picking up the brunt of the work in the last decade deserve explicit recognition, for we have almost slipped into taking them for granted. It cannot be said that the plums have been left till last – there is actually quite a lot of pudding ...”

“... When​ Donald Trump nominated Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon, as secretary of state, Robert McNally found the choice unremarkable. ‘The closest thing we have to a secretary of state outside government is the CEO of Exxon,’ he said. McNally is an energy consultant, a former adviser to George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, and a member of the National Petroleum Council ...”

“... If this is a bleaker, more disenchanted book than Reading for the Plot, it is largely because of Donald Trump, even though the former president isn’t granted the dignity of a mention. It begins with a quotation from Game of Thrones: ‘There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it.’ One ...”

“... capacity to project new instances of itself: as the fruit, in ‘The Witch of Atlas’, turns the light and dew by inward power To its own substance. What such poetry presents is the force of desire rather than any images it would be adequate to cull from experience. Bloom says: ‘The image Shelley seeks is one which can embody the confrontation of life by ...”

“... knew, Wittgenstein and Ben Richards were never in Liverpool together, so this did indeed put a new light on things. I replied to Mr Orchard that his information was certainly of some interest and that yes, I’d love to see the proof. He turned out to be as good as his word. Back came pictures of the 1939 AEC Regent with LCT body (Weyman shell) used in ...”

“... they just look yellow to human beings, and the explanation for this is that their surface reflects light in such a way that when it strikes a human eye, it produces the characteristic visual experience that we call seeing yellow. The reflective properties of lemons are due to their primary qualities, describable entirely in the language of physics – chemical ...”

“... along the fissures of the reefs in pale-pink quilting. And silverweed, luminously dewy and light turquoise as though a master tailor had found the fabric of them secreted by the earth and cut it into these toothed patterns to embroider every square foot of the old tillage-grounds. In four days I saw 25 species of flower, plus sundew and red clover on ...”

“... anxiously – and accurately – to his agent, on the opening of Small Craft Warnings in 1971. Donald Spoto believes the story he has pieced together reveals his subject ‘as a man more disturbing, more dramatic, richer and more wonderful than any character he ever created’. This orotund declaration is simply irrelevant, and it does less than justice to ...”

“... time as a way of justifying restrictions on citizens’ interventions at political gatherings. If Donald Rumsfeld comes to give a speech and someone in the audience shouts out that he is a war criminal, the heckler is quickly and forcibly removed. When I came to America, I was amazed that nobody thought this was a violation of the First Amendment. (Shouting ...”