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“... When it comes to gringo-bashing – berating the US for its imperialist policies in Latin America – no native nationalist can compete with an impassioned gringo. Mexico, which historically has been the chief victim of such policies, has produced plenty of such nationalists: but it is the occasional gringo heretic – like the muckraking journalist John Kenneth Turner who, in 1909, blew the whistle on Mexican neo-slavery, alleging that his compatriots had ‘transformed Mexico into a slave colony of the US’ – who has often made the biggest impact ...”

“... that it can be (and has been) questioned whether it should be called a revolution at all. Alan Knight, whose masterly two-volume account it would be difficult to overpraise, leaves his readers in no doubt that it should. How likely it is that his account will come to be accepted as definitive is a question which only specialists in Mexican ...”

“... responded mainly to its single-minded concentration on the personality of the hero as revealed by Alan Howard’s performance. This dominated the production and whatever our personal opinions might have been, it was clearly a grand achievement. It had an immediate appeal, and that is a final, or almost final, dramatic test. I have not myself seen it, but the ...”

“... and conflicting objectives that Bacon composed the works contained in the collection edited by Alan Stewart with Harriet Knight. The Oxford Francis Bacon is a major scholarly project conceived by the late Graham Rees and administered nowadays by an editorial advisory board of 16 experts under the direction of Brian ...”

“... the most appealing a beaker on a dish with a rose belonging to the Saltwood Bequest and so to Alan Clark who is somewhere about, though I don’t see (or hear) him. Then there are lots of terrible flower paintings before some wonderful Goyas in the last room, including a heap of dead fish. The look in the eye of one of the dead bream seems familiar then I ...”

“... of 1936. Like that lecture, all the items in this volume, save a paper on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, have previously been published (some of them more than once), and the book provides further evidence, if evidence be needed, of Christopher Tolkien’s enterprising combination of filial piety and commercial flair. For many readers, the convenience of ...”

“... en gâteaux might be – the late Freddie Trueman I would guess, Michael Parkinson possibly and Alan Titchmarsh (who’s so amiable he might even do it). A candidate for pâtisserie posterity would once have been that son of Yorkshire Jimmy Savile who seemed made from marzipan. But not now. No cake for James.7 August, Oxford. To Oxford and the Holywell ...”

“... It was surprising to see the resemblances between Her Victory and This Earth of Mankind. Alan Sillitoe’s new novel is about 50-year-old Britons feeling rootless. Pramoedya Ananta Toer is concerned with young people of the Dutch East Indies in the 1890s, almost choked with different roots – religions, races, cultures, classes – all sprouting wildly ...”

“... and, so as not to leave the chapter sequence to chance, a polygraphie du cavalier, or ‘Knight’s Tour’ chess problem, which is the pattern a knight makes when travelling to every spot on the board without revisiting a single square twice (Perec tweaked the 8 x 8 layout of the chessboard to accommodate the 10 x ...”

“... read Tennyson could think that his verse ever moves like this: When one – some wondrous stately knight – Of our great Arthur’s ‘Table Round’; One, brave as Launcelot, and Spotless as the pure Sir Galahad, Should come, and coming, choose her For his love, and in her name, And for the sake of her fair eyes, Should do most knightly deeds. Fifty lines ...”

“... active queen. Over the course of the next few moves, Carlsen managed to bring his rook, knight and dark-square bishop into the attack. He advanced a pawn close to Caruana’s king, kept his own king out of danger, and had an extra half hour on the clock. It wasn’t a clear win for Carlsen, but he was certainly ahead. Rumours then began to circulate ...”

“... of others. The publishers are said to have had a hard time preparing this book, with the gentle knight anxious to tone down any remark that might offend. None do, but the anxiety is typical and so is the hard time, as he’s notorious for changing his mind. In fact, the only person who does get any stick is young Mr Gielgud. ‘I had little idea at that ...”

“... little squint at life on patrol and in the barracks: now let’s hear from the veteran himself. Alan Judd’s A Breed of Heroes begins a little hesitantly, as befits a first novel, but it is my belief that it will become a minor classic of its kind. In his six-page (!) self-congratulatory Preface, Dennis Barker describes a peculiarly irritating ‘Clicking ...”

“... exports and ecology’ that Sir James Goldsmith was nominated for a peerage, and then demoted to a knight by the Scrutiny Committee, in what is bitterly remembered as the Wilson Honours List. Was there a connection between Sir James’s elevation and his year-long battle to punish Private Eye and jail its editor, Richard Ingrams – an effort which was ...”

“... suddenly feel better, thank God we’re back.’ Miss Bennett landed a film part with Alan Ladd, Godfrey was doing a commentary for an Alec Guinness film. Robert Hardy came to see him one evening while she was still at the studios and scolded: ‘Godfrey, you’re very lazy sitting about like that. You know what you should be doing? Preparing to ...”