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“... diplomacy’. And most of them were Belgian.De Witte’s book, ably translated by Ann Wright and Renée Fenby, is preoccupied with the Belgian role in Lumumba’s fall and death. This narrowness of focus is very necessary and welcome. As Adam Hochschild found when he came to write King Leopold’s Ghost,* the obduracy and arrogance of ...”

“... Ernesto Guevara de la Serna found what his life was for in July 1955, in Mexico City. It was there, at the age of 27, that he met Raúl Castro, who introduced him to his older brother, Fidel. The Argentine doctor joined a motley band of Cuban expeditionaries in the near-suicidal landing (or sinking) of the Granma in a mangrove swamp at the eastern end of the island ...”

“... To judge by the reaction of some of his staunchest admirers, many readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez were truly taken aback by what he wrote about the alleged behaviour of British troops in the trenches during the Little War for the Falklands. It’s surprising, however, that most of his disenchanted fans live not in England but in Spain, where the offending article appeared ...”

“... a habit of killing her clients. In her slangy but always entertaining life of Restell, Jennifer Wright argues that the ‘most remarkable aspect of Madame Restell’s practice is that, despite some accusations, there’s little evidence that any patients died in her care.’ In other words, Restell was probably the best third party anyone in New York could ...”

“... from the correspondents. In contrast to this testimony of passion for English landscape, Mary Ann Caws and Sarah Bird Wright document their theme by trawling the letters of the Woolfs, the Stracheys, the Bells et al for French references. The result is easier to browse than to read right through (they’ve failed to ...”

“... By the end​ of the last century, Venezuela’s old constitutional order, which for four decades had rotated power between two ideologically indistinguishable parties, was close to collapse. The crisis had started decades earlier, in 1983, when the bottom fell out of the world oil market. Then, as now, Venezuela derived most of its state revenue from the export of petroleum ...”

“... the windows of Newcastle’s law courts. Inside Court One, the prosecuting barrister, Richard Wright, was about to show a video of the murder scene. Wright has a commanding presence and an instinct for the dramatic. What the jurors were about to see was disturbing, he said. There would be blood, although Nikki’s body ...”

“... eight years – George Stubbs in 1984; Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting in 1987; Wright of Derby last year. None of these was quite as blandly factual as Constable, nor so studiously innocent of the desire to situate the objects on display within a context wider than the work of the artist himself. But together they produce the sense that a ...”

“... costumes and allusions and games (‘The Millers couldn’t make it ... Glenn, Arthur, Henry and Ann.’ ‘The Coopers couldn’t make it. Gary, Gladys, Fenimore and Diana’). The writing is full of the glitter that Powell has so assiduously fended off, if indeed it assailed him. James himself is up on a tightrope of style, wobbling away, relentlessly ...”

“... with progressivism.The Shakers believed in the equality of the sexes. Their leader was Mother Ann Lee, who led eight acolytes in 1774 from Manchester to Watervliet, New York (now Colonie). She was only 48 when she died, and became more than a saint: her followers believed that she was the second coming of Christ, his female counterpart. It was she who ...”

“... isn’t new: there was a genre called Black Naturalism which encompassed such writers as Richard Wright, Ann Petry and Paul Laurence Dunbar. The Black Naturalists found naturalism a ready-made mode for representing life under white supremacy. For many Black Americans, there was always a boundary in sight, setting a limit ...”

“... to the attention of the editors at Partisan Review, who began publishing her criticism: Richard Wright, Faulkner, Hart Crane, the Goncourts – Hardwick could turn her hand to almost anything. When Philip Rahv met her, he was struck by her gumption. He asked her what she thought of Diana Trilling: ‘Not much.’ ‘I weighed about ten pounds ...”

“... the Seven-Wise-Men Consulting the New Venetian Oracle. His target had delivered itself ready-made. Ann Jemima Provis and her father, Thomas, had hoodwinked West and seven other academicians to purchase (at ten guineas each) the ‘secret’ of Titian and his classic Venetian colouring. Gillray lined up the gullibles, seated and well-behaved like spaniels ...”

“... and columnists were not slow to take him up. ‘This week Goliath strode into battle,’ Mary Ann Sieghart wrote in the Times, meaning Davis. ‘We don’t yet know whether young David has fatally felled his hitherto invincible foe, but if he has, his weapons were flair, freshness, bravery and a genuine feel for contemporary politics.’ Beyond this lay ...”