The sure sign of a weak man who ascends to glory is that he can't tolerate having strong men around him. - Clive James

Hughes spends a lot of time in this book saying what his country never had, and still hasn't got. Actually it's got it, because it's got Hughes. He should give his country a little more credit, if only because it still gives so much credit to him.

The question of originality, if it arises at all, can never be peripheral: originality is more than a requirement in good poetry, it is a description of it.

The flowers bloomed, the schools of thought contended, and Mao's executioners went to work. The slogan had the same function as the Constitution of the Soviet Union, which Aleksandr Zinoviev tellingly defined as a document published in order to find out who agreed with it, so that they could be dealt with.