Search Results

“... Edward Norman’s Reith Lectures reminded a surprised audience that His Kingdom is not of This World, and hinted that there was more than a little that was bogus about Third World theologians who sought to change that fundamental proposition. For this book he has brought together his Birkbeck Lectures at Cambridge and his Prideaux Lectures at Exeter to form a comparative account of ecclesiastical developments in Latin America and in South Africa ...”

“... should be repudiated whatever the risk and that’s that. To these hesitant advisers I prefer Dr Edward Norman, Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He assures us that the arguments against disarmament are entirely consistent with Christianity. What is more, ‘everything in human history pointed to the fact that the Bomb would one day be dropped.’ But ...”

“... has chosen to take in this book, the question presses heavily on Cowling himself. His colleague Edward Norman, who recently voiced in his Reith Lectures prejudices similar to Cowling’s, is criticised for the ‘wavering and inadequate expression that he gives to his conception of the Church of England’, and it is said that he ‘is in danger of ...”

“... genteel domesticity could come from a Mike Leigh script. Take his description of tea with Edward and ‘Medea’: She was about to pour the tea. Instead, she hurled the full teapot across the room, in the direction of Edward’s head; it was quite a good, very powerful shot, but it just missed him, shattering ...”

“... kings of practising serial monogamy. Both Æthelred and Cnut had children by two wives (Emma the Norman married both of them), producing a total of six or seven variously significant brothers and half-brothers. The only 100 per cent Englishmen among them were Edmund Ironside and his brother Edwig, and once they had been eliminated (by 1017), there was only ...”

“... point holds good. I am reminded of a radio interview in which the ultra-conservative cleric Edward Norman, then dean of Peterhouse, tried unsuccessfully to cajole the Reverend Ian Paisley into a declaration that liberalism was the root of all evil. Paisley was not to be budged from his own hobbyhorse; of course liberalism was an abomination, but ...”

“... on 14 October 1066. It is the final event that has dominated the public imagination. Since Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings (1848), ‘last of’ has been almost obligatory in book titles, picked up by Charles Kingsley in Hereward the Wake, Last of the English (1866), and continued more recently in Hebe Weenolsen’s The ...”

“... in 1066, conveniently ominous for the tapestry’s mendacious propaganda on behalf of the Norman Conquest. 1986 sees another remarkable periodic manifestation: this year is the 900th anniversary of Domesday Book, and centennial celebrations are in progress. Domesday Book consists of two volumes compiled in 1086: a parchment folio, Great Domesday ...”

“... Dutch master which pushes Freddie Montgomery over the edge into homicide. Like Banville, Howard Norman and Katharine Weber write about stealing Dutch paintings, and they share a similar attitude to them. For them, Dutch art represents modesty of subject-matter, and precision – ‘the details’ is a phrase of some importance in both novels, and both are ...”

“... remorselessly, he has been on the wrong side of the entire US Government, of the New Republic, of Norman Podhoretz, of nearly every journalist of note, left, right and centre, of the New York Times, of the McNeil-Lehrer Report (see in particular his devastating replication of that TV programme’s famous ‘balance’, with the ponderously sober ...”

“... whenever possible, actual books and ideas, that help explain the mysterious novels and stories. Norman Sherry famously does this in Conrad’s Eastern World and Conrad’s Western World, remarkable works of sleuthing rediscovery that respectively cover Conrad’s Indian and Pacific Ocean voyages, and his wanderings in Africa, Europe and Latin America. But ...”

“... is levied at this point, leave without ever penetrating beyond the choir, to the shrine of St Edward behind the High Altar and the royal tombs which surround it. Yet this was the heart of medieval Westminster, and the reason for the existence of the present building. Those who skip it miss more than holy bones. Within the shrine space, near the tomb of St ...”

“... I thought – I recognise that voice. That’s the bastard who threatened me.’ He was begged by Norman Willis and sundry other trade-union people not to make this a police issue as the man might go to prison. In fact, he knows the name, is legally advised not to reveal it, but the person claiming to have committed arson and threatening arson and murder ...”

“... get their share of attention in the book’s last two chapters: it appears that the Norman Yoke bore especially hard upon women, and that the ‘harsh realities’ of their post-1066 existence were aggravated by the fact that their ‘literary image ... becomes stereo-typed’. This is a very learned and deeply enjoyable book, full of unexpected ...”

“... reflected that, while kind hearts and simple faith were excellent things in their way, a hint of Norman blood would do no harm. Like Joyce, writing obsessively about the Ireland he had quitted, he achieved fame as a chronicler of the family, the institution from which he fought a long campaign to escape. Slightly inconsistently, he married, after a long ...”