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“... Borges’s visit to St Andrews as a coming to terms with his early lost love.The New Yorker writer Alastair Reid, a Scot who was one of Borges’s translators and with whom Borges stayed in St Andrews, mentions the visit at least twice. Reid’s essay ‘Borges and Neruda’ describes how Borges ‘took walks with my ...”

“... Neruda. Isla Negra (neither black nor an island, Enrico Mario Santí reminds us in an afterword to Alastair Reid’s translation) is the name of the village where Neruda bought a house in 1939, and where he spent much of his writing time. The book named for the village was first published in five brief volumes in 1964, and the full title is Memorial de ...”

“... According to his friend from a younger generation, the Chilean writer and diplomat Jorge Edwards, the most enigmatic thing about Pablo Neruda was the way he could switch in one bound, so to speak, from solitude to sociability. This poet of the sea and of lonely places was also one of the most gregarious people Edwards has ever known. Neruda discusses the contrasting attractions of ‘solitude and multitude’ in his Memoirs:    The human crowd has been the lesson of my life ...”

“... putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet’ (Alastair Reid) – reads the same frontwards or backwards. Upside-downs read differently depending on which way up they are. Hammond and Hughes call this a metathesis: ‘A raven is like a writing desk because it bodes ill for owed bills’ (James ...”

“... in the Compendium, enterprising if a little short on stamina compared with Perec’s monster, from Alastair Reid: ‘T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name: “Gnat-dirt upset on drab pot toilet.” ’ The Oulipo has been going about its palindromic and associated verbal business for almost forty years, having ...”

“... politicians, one seeking to shepherd labour towards the left, the other towards the right. Fred Reid writes of Keir Hardie as newspaper editor, convinced that ‘he, almost alone, stood firm for socialism’ in the ILP, and determined therefore to keep its organ, the Labour Leader, under his private control. Its style was coloured by the ‘new ...”

“... me, he was schooled in Scotland; like me, he spent almost all his life elsewhere. Unlike the late Alastair Reid and so many other Scottish writers, Karl was not a son of the manse. He was the love-child of two obstinately laic and sceptical individuals, and – although all his work was lit up by his fascination with the dualism inherent in the Calvinist ...”

“... had to be set free in Cuba sooner or later, and he was. Now he is also Scot-free – working with Alastair Reid, formerly from the East Neuk of Fife. Padilla is from Pinar del Rio, the pinewood by the river, in Western Cuba: tobacco country. In Legacies the kilt matches the Havana wrapper perfectly. Here are some samples. Ladies first. ‘Advice to a ...”

“... instalment, censored at least as carefully as before. 4 June. Talk with Cambridge labour historian Alastair Reid about Scottish devolution. Alastair, a Clydesider born and bred, says he has always been conscious of how deeply and irreconcilably the Scots are divided among themselves ...”

“... not even that it is false’). But it’s possible that the grammar itself is a bit loose, and Alastair Reid’s wording (also 1962) makes more sense to me: ‘Now, in all memories, a fictitious past occupies the place of any other. We know nothing about it with any certainty, not even that it is false.’ Either: we don’t know enough about our real ...”

“... knight. The slow leaves now recall a solemn child who dreams vague things he does not understand. Alastair Reid, in his translation, reverses the grammar and makes the child the object rather than the subject of the sentence, which also works, but loses the delicacy in the idea of the child turning the slow pages. Volver is not the usual verb for this ...”

“... the violence that Brown wished on his enemies. The underling was working towards the Führer. Alastair Campbell, speaking on Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics, thinks the proper analogy is with football. McBride was a rogue player so set on mindless aggression that he fouled people all over the pitch. He was like a footballer who was happy to kick his own ...”

“... not to be ‘outflanked’ on the right Blair and Straw went with him all the way. Since Alastair Campbell’s genius did not go as far as devising a strategy to deal with the tabloid press, New Labour simply accepted the tabloid view of the electorate at face value and Blair has seemed increasingly happy with that. Thus any policy thought to be ...”

“... Borges’s poetry into English, using some of the best contemporary poets and translators such as Alastair Reid, Richard Wilbur and John Hollander. He also worked with Borges on translating his prose works into English, and coaxed him into producing new stories and a long autobiographical piece for the New Yorker. All of this is vividly described in The ...”

“... and what she eventually gave was a mendacious little speech composed for her with the help of Alastair Campbell, in which she spoke about how she felt as a queen and as a grandmother. No one believed she really meant it, but that didn’t matter; she got through by showing she wasn’t above sharing, and that was enough. Still, she was bested throughout ...”