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“... except his supercilious brazen bounciness. Hrabal’s style (or at least how it comes through Paul Wilson’s translation) is similarly freewheeling, exuberant, torrential, full of food and drink and wild scenes in cafés and athletic sexual encounters. Much of it strikes me as being more like what the Germans think of as uproariously funny than we ...”

“... In 1972, Routledge and Kegan Paul published The Victorian City: Images and Realities, edited by H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff, a Wagnerian epic in which history went to town in exuberant, zestful and flamboyant fashion. Understandably, the two volumes won immediate and widespread acclaim as a tour de force of entrepreneurial inspiration and editorial skill: ‘a study in superlatives’ was the response of one ecstatic reviewer ...”

“... Millennium Experience, set ablaze. Flames visible across the river from Beckton Alp to Parliament Hill. ‘A man said to have a slight Irish accent said: “This is the IRA. We have planted bombs at the southern entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel. For goodness sake, do something about it. We want the area cleared.”’ So Gareth Parry reported in the Guardian ...”

“... male’, an essential player in many scenarios who exists to give support and advice. Paul Henreid in Casablanca is a good general example, but, in addition to older relations and colleagues, there are specialised subcategories like lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists and impresarios (see if you can think of at least five of each). Categories are not ...”

“... there is the instance of the Harrier jet, which mysteriously ejected its experienced pilot over a hill in Wiltshire on the summit of which only six months previously a crop circle had been formed.What about the jelly? I said. In your book you said you’d found inside one of these circles a blob of luminous white jelly and it was a completely unidentifiable ...”

“... afternoons catching trout. From the small car park a track leads through woods to the top of the hill. The views are majestic. The Firth of Tay lies below, and beyond the Carse of Gowrie are the Grampian hills, presently under fresh snow. Westward up Strathearn one can see Ben Vorlich and Stuc a’ Chroin, even Ben More if it’s clear. The view is vast, but ...”

“... thought about this for some time but my thoughts were focused when I saw Isabelle Huppert in Paul Verhoeven’s 2016 film, Elle. The film begins with a rape about which the victim, Huppert, is ambivalent. This sent the critics, particularly male critics, scuttling to and fro wondering whether it was a feminist, post-feminist or anti-feminist film, or ...”

“... having your life picked over, but having it picked over by sneering toffs is very grim indeed. Paul Hill and Gerry Conlon have separately told me the same story of how, during their trial for the Guildford bombings, they used to stare at Sir Michael Havers QC, their prosecutor and chief tormentor. Havers had a nervous twitch and when the defendants ...”

“... be many who are unfamiliar with the outlines of the Scott Fitzgerald story: the early years in St Paul as the humiliated son of a failed businessman (and as the inordinately proud descendant of Francis Scott Key, author of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’); the glorious salad days at Princeton University, which he left without a degree; the wartime courtship of ...”

“... of Heroes, the Valhalla Monument built by Leo von Klenze at the behest of Ludwig I of Bavaria on a hill overlooking the Danube (it’s also the subject of a painting by Turner, who was present at its opening in 1842). Friezes display Germania, the symbol of German unity in the 19th century, and Hermann or Arminius annihilating the Emperor Augustus’s ...”

“... to the parklands once tended by the bucolic poet Chris Torrance), then transplanted to Notting Hill (crucible of all the counter-culture follies he was later to deride). An instinctive autodidact, Home was soon weeviling through bookstall fodder, from skins and sorts and bikers to the half-forgotten magi of the Gothic, to Black Mask, Up Against the Wall ...”

“... connection with one still uproven fact of limited general significance’. On the other hand, Paul Hyams hailed it as a blast of fresh air and the sort of book we need more of, and Ernest Gellner was equally enthusiastic about its intellectual daring. I thought it was a splendid piece of work: a small book with large implications. Moreover, in its main ...”

“... Pissarro​ , Camille Pissarro’s eldest son, was barely into his teens in the mid 1870s when Paul Cézanne came to live nearby. Nonetheless he retained strong memories of the time, and many years later his brother Paul-Émile wrote down these sentences at Lucien’s dictation:Cézanne lived in Auvers, and he used to ...”

“... dance of the intellect, if you will, and in these qualities have an affinity with the painting of Paul Klee. His syntax plays a critical role, with its orderings, the alternating presences and absences, its copulae or want of; clauses gone floating from the main substantive and verb; periodicity, abrupt declarative bursts. The poems have a tense, torqued ...”

“... look. Further discomfort was to come during the Senate hearings, when a former colleague, Anita Hill, accused Thomas of sexually suggestive comments and advances. Thomas – who scraped in on a 52-48 vote – described the media firestorm as ‘a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves’.The televised hearings on ...”