Owning Up
Made a mistake? A really bad one? The best thing to do is to own up. In full..
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Expelled from the Word Hoard
Is it good news or bad news when ‘selfie’ is added to the dictionary? And what if ‘sepia’ is chucked out to make room for it?
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Frances Burney, Facebook Friends: 0
Having no intimates, and no one to whom she could confide her feelings, Frances Burney addressed them confidently to Nobody.
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Bascombe Is Back
Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe is back in a new novel, Let Me Be Frank with You. The only thing John Banville doesn’t like is the title.
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In Proud And Glorious Memory
It has been suggested that many participants in the First World War sleepwalked into a conflict whose future dimensions they could not at the time imagine. But Italy walked into it wide awake … having first devoted some thought to who was likely to win.
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GBS: An Old Man’s Dreams
Whatever we have done, or whatever we have failed to do, may pursue us through restless nights for many decades after our conscious minds have forgotten it all.
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This Won’t Hurt
In among the dross, occasional nuggets of gold can be found at the bottoms of the pages of many academic works, the historian of learning Anthony Grafton suggests.
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Byron in Venice
The great romantic poet found the Adriatic city to be a place where he could indulge both his spiritual and intellectual longings and his more carnal ones.
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Wandering Jews
The late historian Tony Judt rose from a poor London Jewish background to become a world-renowned scholar and political thinker. Would he have achieved the same had he been born in Ireland, where his father shipped up in the 1930s?
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It’s the real thing
Colm Toibin’s new novel, Nora Webster, has been garnering some very high praise from the critics.