Search Results

“... turned this trope on its head in the early 1630s: for him Shakespeare was still a bird – a wood-warbler, apparently – but one who was to be identified not as a divine father but as a divinely parented infant. In ‘L’Allegro’, the lively extrovert of the title proposes an excursion to the theatre, where he and his companions may hear ‘Sweetest ...”

“... Deep lustrous colours – oils, unmixed, swirly and thick – within a wide and solid matt-black wood frame. (Nolde made them himself: he had no use for the ornate plaster gilt of a backward-looking early 20th century.) Or waving, blowsy flowers, an infinity of oranges and reds. Or an agitated sea with an oblique crack of sunset or divine mercy in it, the ...”

“... The acrimony in Michael Hofmann’s book is that of a son towards his father. Like a family photograph album, the sequence ‘My Father’s House’ records the son’s growth from childhood to manhood, and the father’s from early to late middle age: each poem denotes some new phase, and usually low point, in the relationship ...”

“... but which turned out to be a marathon. The pack thins and the stayers are revealed in the lead (Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach and Adrian Berg, for example). With so many of the tedious political attitudes of the artists of the Sixties discredited, those who have been slow to slough them off (following Kitaj’s example once again) have found themselves ...”

“... well, the fuel, along with the body beneath it, was trampled underfoot. Chambort ‘packed the wood down with his foot’ and ‘danced precariously’ atop the pile ... Young Campot also danced about and raised his arms while shouting ‘Vive I’Empéreur!’ ... [The] men displayed a ‘fierce joy’, and those closest to the fire fanned the flames. The ...”

“... science is thin, like the layer of living tissue below the bark of a tree. It is supported by the wood of old ideas (all wood is, strictly speaking, dead). As time passes, what was the surface is overlaid by new work and itself becomes part of the wood. Distances on the surface get ...”

“... In February​ 2018, 120 women detainees at Yarl’s Wood Immigrant Removal Centre began a one-month work and hunger strike. Several received letters from the Home Office informing them that their deportation would not be delayed by their action, in fact it was more likely to be brought forward. Serco, the private company that runs Yarl’s Wood, denied that the hunger strike was taking place ...”

“... laid out, in a serpentine river, pieces of water, lawns, &c, and very gracefully adorn’d with wood. One first comes to an island in which there is a castle, then near the water is a gateway, with a tower on each side, and passing between two waters there is a fine cascade from one to the other, a thatch’d house, a round pavilion on a mount, [and] Shake ...”

“... cross-braced columns, glass balustrades, glass elevators, and a modicum of stainless steel and wood. The aesthetic of early Modern architectural fantasies (in particular Mies’s early skyscraper drawings) adumbrated such things, but real buildings did not achieve details on this scale. The smaller basic window unit in a classic curtain wall of the ...”

“... word) of Strong. The first is a predictably gloomy view of a classically old-fashioned museum: wood-block floor, two benches in the centre of the gallery, paintings crammed onto the walls (20 assorted 17th-century portraits are visible in this shot alone), and no trace of an information panel beyond the tiny labels perched under each picture. The second ...”

“... in Malaysia. It is wonderfully judged, full of vitality, with stylistic naivities, like knots in wood, that authenticate it and lend it further charm: The first hot meal for thirty hours of hard going was cooked by Len Knotman. By seven, when it began to get dark, four of us turned in, and I for one fell asleep immediately. Before it got dark we found a ...”

“... a special cash award for him, then she put him into the hands of a remarkable agent called Audrey Wood who immediately began nudging him towards fame and fortune. At one stage, esteemed but not yet famous, he was engineered a job as a screenwriter at MGM. They wanted him to fashion what he termed a ‘celluloid brassiere’ for Lana Turner, but he insisted on ...”

“... in the fields, they killed chickens, canned vegetables, scrubbed floors, baked bread, chopped wood and hauled water. After days of such serf-like toil, says Baker, it was surprising that these women had energy left to nourish their mutual disdain. This disdain was not merely a matter of mothers and daughters-in-law. It reflected two conflicting views of ...”

“... to the station. What was this ill-formed, lazy train when compared to the beauty of a rustling wood? Thirsty snakes drank from puddles. Hurriedly buttoning their uniforms, sleepy stationmasters ran onto the platforms of small stations. Or ‘Ode to Softness’: Mornings are blind as newborn cats. Fingernails grow so trustfully, for a while they don’t ...”

“... V on his marriage to Isabella of Portugal. Not far from these objects is a pair of polychromed wood busts of an Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa by Andrea de Mena, one of few named female sculptors from the 17th century. Andrea was the daughter of the sculptor Pedro de Mena and entered a convent aged twenty, perhaps to focus on her craft without the hindrance ...”