Search Results

“... Cushla Lavery, the class’s teacher and the young Catholic protagonist of Trespasses, Louise Kennedy’s first novel, hates the ritual of The News and the specialist vocabulary it inculcates. ‘Rubber bullets. Saracen. Internment. The Special Powers Act.’ But the headmaster refuses to drop it, on the grounds that it encourages his pupils ...”

“... the generic spectre of Death, who stalked children in times of high infant mortality. The trial of Louise Woodward and her initial conviction for the first-degree murder of Matthew Eappen reverberates with the atavistic confusion of all forms of child death, whether occurring by design, accident or injury, especially when a woman is involved. A large body of ...”

“... is one of The Humbling’s household gods. Attempting a Tempest/Macbeth double bill at the Kennedy Center, the 65-year-old protagonist, Simon Axler, ‘the last of the best of the classical American stage actors’, is suddenly abandoned by his talent. No reason is given – there is no reason – and Axler suffers a breakdown, aggravated by his ...”

“... then kicked his wife, loosening four of her teeth, until she passed out. Whereupon Lolly H. and Louise [Crane], with great cries of distress and sympathy, tried to bring Mrs Thomas to. At this point Mr Thomas said to Louise, who was bending over the prostrated Mrs Thomas: ‘What the hell are you crying over her for? You ...”

“... Twenties. It is hard to believe, as you drive from the West Side down 125th Street en route for Kennedy, that it was ever a glamorous place. It is now generally thought to be dangerous; drivers lock their car doors at traffic-lights and dread the ‘squeegee merchants’ – I daresay that trade, so irksome to Mr Straw, had its origins in New York City. But ...”

“... York, where he had a house; to be a slightly reluctant literary adornment to Camelot during the Kennedy era; to take a highly visible stand against the Vietnam War; and so on. As his journals and letters make clear, he knew everybody (and the very fact that he kept such discursive journals and wrote such copious letters contributes to his iconic ...”

“... Orléans y Borbón, Duchess of Galliera; Prince Albert, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein; Princess Marie Louise of Anhalt; and Princess Alice of Teck. The First World War was a challenge to this high society of monarchs and aristocrats. The Russian-born Dowager Duchess of Coburg was denounced in Germany as a spy; she was British before she became German, having ...”

“... media-mediated tragedy, from the Oklahoma City bombings to the O.J. Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey and Louise Woodward cases. Mourners and survivors say they need it, readers and audiences claim they desire it, yet the files remain open. ‘Closure’ is not news. The mechanism of cultural Schadenfreude ensures the endless recycling of the story, with variations ...”