Monday, 28 January 2019

Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death

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Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death. The worse of the punk rock groups, I suppose, currently are the Sex Pistols. ...
Wednesday, 23 January 2019

Being in ... prog acts was great because you could play in 15/8 time and still stay in good hotels.

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Almost half a century on, 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' still resonates with echoes of that golden summer [1967]. In 2009, it was still B...
Saturday, 19 January 2019

People say that a book you can't find doesn't exist

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I recall that for a while, even though the situation was so desperate, Brauer spent all his time bringing his card index up to date. He was...
Friday, 18 January 2019

It is often much harder to get rid of books than it is to acquire them

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It is often much harder to get rid of books than it is to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with the...
Saturday, 5 January 2019

he had known more policemen by their first names than any other man in the metropolis

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There were men in London - bookmakers, skittle sharps, jellied eel sellers on race courses, and men like that - who would not have known wh...
Saturday, 24 November 2018

I think of old British colonialists, bred to authority and the wide horizons, living out their pensioned lives in semi-detached houses of cramped suburbia

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At the other end of life I have often met exiles from their own times. I think of old British colonialists, bred to authority and the wide ...
Friday, 23 November 2018

Possesses still, at least for romantics like me, a fragrant sense of what might-have-been

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The most appealing aspect of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at least in retrospect, was its European cosmopolitanism. It had few black , brow...