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“... i.m. David Douglas, 1798-1834 Accompanied by eagles, David Douglas trecked Through forests and rivers in search of seed. Wet or wounded, he remained undaunted: His roots in Scone, his crown outside. The Indians called him ‘grassman’, Watched him paddle his own canoe. He went through rapids, escaped from a whirlpool, There seemed nothing he wouldn’t do ...”

“... in the hitherto unpublished Aesthetics in Scotland and from the trammels of which the editor Alan Bold cannot cut himself entirely free. Oxenhorn recognises the national character of MacDiarmid’s poetry, but he is seeking to judge it in international terms. This involves a certain deflation of the undeniable element of bombast and overwriting in ...”

“... Hugh MacDiarmid did not exist. And only Christopher Murray Grieve would have dared to invent him. Alan Bold’s valuable biography points out that when the 30-year-old Grieve began to write in the Scottish Chapbook under the pseudonym ‘M’Diarmid’, he was already editing the magazine under his own name, reviewing for it as ‘Martin ...”

“... worked hardest to argue for a division between the role of MacDiarmid and the person of Grieve was Alan Bold, MacDiarmid’s biographer. He knew Grieve in the later stages of his life and respected the sometimes tender, gentlemanly man he knew. These views inform his 1984 edition of the Letters of Hugh MacDiarmid, a fact he emphasised in the introduction ...”

“... covered by this selection of his letters. (The earlier ones came out as In Broken Images in 1982.) Alan Bold’s index to the MacDiarmid volume has no entry for Graves, any more than Paul O’Prey’s has for MacDiarmid. The two poets, though contemporaries, might have been inhabiting different planets. And yet the impression one gets from the two books ...”

“... of Virgil, Horace and Cicero. Allan Massie is a Scotsman, applauded for his Scottishness by Alan Bold and Douglas Dunn, and he has adopted one of Scott’s devices for excusing the excesses of his imagination. Sir Walter would insert into his historical romances the pedantic objections of some imaginary fool, called Dryasdust or Cleishbottom: after ...”

“... countryman, who notices morning frost, a caterpillar looped in the road, sunset on the fells. Alan Bold overstates the case for Neill in his introduction, but this is the man’s sixth collection and it does seem remarkable that he is not known in England, even by exiled Scots. It can’t, however, surprise Neill, who would feel uncomfortable if ...”

“... of The White Hotel offered itself: he knew Lisa would end up there. But why was it so obvious? The bold Eros/Thanatos diagram Thomas is intent on constructing is achieved at the expense of the sympathetic realism of the later parts of the novel, and the details of Lisa’s end conform to a literary and superimposed scheme. Thomas tries to justify this by ...”

“... Berlin, Munich and Zurich. The company were known to Europe from previous visits, but it was a bold adventure, the bolder for the play chosen. It is far from easy in style, and only too likely to baffle a foreign audience, but if fully understood it is instead likely to channel fierce political passions. It had already had a recent showing, in adaptations ...”

“... peasant rebellion in south-western Mexico is important here). But he works on a big canvas, with bold brushstrokes. He does not involve himself much with the finer nuances of Mexican rural society, which have absorbed the attention of many recent historians (peasant subgroups, regional and local variations, considerations of mentalité); nor does he address ...”

“... jaded, just more discriminating than he gave them credit for. He thought he was saying something bold and new in Britannia Hospital but even in 1982 he wasn’t – not in England anyway. One of his Polish friends said: ‘It’s the best Polish film I’ve seen in a long time.’ Of course his films provoked and when Britannia Hospital was shown at the ...”

“... him away. How long after this it was that Bowie had his breakthrough I’m not sure.15 January. Alan Rickman dies. In the first week of The Habit of Art at the National in 2009 Michael Gambon, playing Auden, was taken ill and rushed to St Thomas’s. He recovered quite quickly, and indeed got out of the ambulance saying: ‘I know what they’re all doing ...”

“... This is the first of two volumes in which Alan Heuser is making a selection of Louis MacNeice’s occasional writings. The first is mainly his reviews of Classical and modern literature; the second will bring together his fugitive pieces on philosophy, history, travel and autobiography. The currently renewed interest in MacNeice arises from two considerations: one, that he deserves better than to be regarded as merely one of Auden’s acolytes; two, that he may be seen as precursor to the young poets in Northern Ireland who have been making a stir, if not a Renaissance, since 1968 ...”

“... MORTIMER: Making a will is a dangerous moment. Life, after all, is on the turn. The timid become bold, the faint-hearted draw courage. The act of writing a will will often induce a fit of insane benevolence towards anyone and everything except those who have properly deserved it – dogs, cats, sailors, donkeys, the widows of clergymen, the friends of Jane ...”

“... said, ‘she’d have made a disastrous queen. Didn’t go to the theatre at all.’ 19 January. Alan Bates opens tonight at the Barbican in the RSC production of Antony and Cleopatra. The version put on at Stratford opened with Antony making love to Cleopatra, his head up her skirts. Cunnilingus served cold, as it were, was quite hard for a Stratford ...”