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“... folksy song delivered over the credits by Glen Campbell, who had a role in the movie. It also had John Wayne at a late stage in his career, converting Cogburn into a genial version of a grizzled movie star acting tough while showing his heart of gold. Wayne got an Oscar for this performance, although ‘performance’ perhaps isn’t quite the word. Seen ...”

“... is, or was, recognised by one kind of how-to-draw book. I have before me How to Draw Horses by John Skeaping, first published in 1941; this seventh impression is dated 1946. In the same series of twenty or so titles were How to Draw ‘Planes by Frank Wootton and Tanks and How to Draw Them by Terence Cuneo – both highly successful workers in long-lasting ...”

“... a circular bronze relief of the Virgin and Child in use as an ashtray.’ The narrator is Sir John Pope-Hennessy and his nocturnal encounter was with one of the most hawk-eyed art-dealers in Europe. ‘ “Was it double-sided?” I asked him. “Yes,” he replied, he thought it was. Next day it was brought to my office …’ And there Pope-Hennessy ...”

“... of field archaeology. The evidence for the transformation of humans from just another species to masters and despoilers of all they see comes from what our ancestors threw away or built into the foundations of their new villages. Archaeology is rubbish. The scientist who probes these piles of waste is rather like one of those sad souls who riffle through the ...”

“... Kentridge’s subject: the art-commissioning body for the World War One centenary gave the job to John Akomfrah, whose three-screen installation, Mimesis: African Soldier, is on show at the Imperial War Museum in London.Akomfrah, born in Ghana in 1957 and famous for his video/sound explorations of migration (mostly forced migrations, including slavery), the ...”

“... stodgy reading, is that with the exception of my own little book on Hume, in the OUP ‘Past Masters’ series – which, since they pay attention to my other writings, I take to have appeared only after their manuscript was completed – there is practically no modern contribution either to the philosophy of Hume or to the topic of causality that they ...”

“... thing, start doing poetry and prose that is nothing but ‘poetry’ and ‘prose’. This is what John Fuller’s new rhymes for children are: they announce their literariness and children can no doubt admire it, for in this context they know, like older readers on the poetry scene, what is proper to it. But Walter de la Mare’s line ‘Who said, “Peacock ...”

“... The self-portrait by Gwen John hanging in the National Portrait Gallery was painted in 1899 or 1900. She is dressed in the formal costume of the period: a tight-waisted blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a big black bow at the neck. Her hair is tied back and her hands are on her hips. She is slightly turned away from us, so only one hand is visible ...”

“... ruin on a newspaper. To make matters worse for the leftish reporters on the Independent, our new masters’ ideas, in so far as they could be understood, appeared to be as reactionary as those of the right-wing press. Yet however hard we tried to oppose, our hostility was muted and unsatisfactory. The Demos crowd didn’t talk like Tories. They appeared to ...”

“... Llandaff. The secret of his puzzling resignation probably lies in a story told in the memoirs of John Addington Symonds, a pupil at Harrow at that time, which were not published till the 1960s. There, a simple tale of blackmail is revealed. For all Vaughan’s intense sermonising on the evils of homosexuality (in one purple passage he referred to a pederast ...”

“... of bogus erudition – the Brexit white paper was, he said, ‘the greatest vassalage since King John paid homage to Philip II at Le Goulet in 1200’ – and he must have enjoyed expressing his hope that it would ‘not be necessary for Her Majesty’s stay at Sandringham to be interrupted by her in person having to prorogue Parliament’. Speaking the next ...”

“... but they know their place, and are seen as doing so. They do not compete with the later French masters of Post-Impressionism. Virginia Woolf, on the other hand, has no rivals on the Continent in her own line, and her reputation has profited from that fact. Yet her sister, Vanessa Bell, is possibly the better letter-writer, with more unforced and ...”

“... I been a painter,’ he wrote in his Memoir, ‘I never would have copied the Works of “0ld Masters” ... I would have gone to nature for all my patterns, for she exhibits an endless variety – not possible to be surpassed and scarcely ever to be equalled.’ And, he adds emphatically, ‘in art nothing is worth looking at but such productions as have ...”

“... whole generation of Australians, like Clive James, is painfully learning the language of their new masters. In one of his more portentous moods, James has promised that ‘one day, if I am granted life, I will write a book about what happened in the Pacific when two nations, Australia and Japan, strange to each other in every conceivable way, met and ...”

“... of sense perception they formed ‘sensory communities’ very different from those of their white masters: different looks (clothing and hairstyles), different sounds (drumming and singing). Such ‘visible and audible otherness’ was bound sooner or later to generate conflict, as in the Stono Rebellion (South Carolina, 1739) and the ‘New York ...”