Word: besting
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Olive, who is the picture of hospitable fertility - she describes herself to Philip as a "tree with birds in it" - represents that brand of early-20th century literary imagination that found its best expression in works for children. (Byatt modeled her on E. Nesbit, author of The Railway Children and Five Children and It.) What could be more delightful than a mother who writes personalized fairy tales for each of her kids? Except, of course, that fairy tales can be the darkest kind there are, and in the case of Olive (and Fludd and most of the other creative types...
...pundit Michelle Malkin said on Fox News, "It's hard not to have a smidge of schadenfreude for somebody who's shown contempt for women in public ... especially over the campaign, and how he's treated Sarah Palin and her family." (Still, post-Palin, Letterman has had his best ratings in years against O'Brien...
...1970s, Brian Clough was one of the best-known figures in Britain. A talented soccer player whose career was cut short by injury, he went into management, leading not one but two unfashionable clubs to the English championship and then winning the European Cup two years in a row. He was a clever, cocky, working-class hero with an opinion on everything from Margaret Thatcher (against) to striking miners (for). Brilliant, needy, self-destructive - he was an alcoholic and had a liver transplant before he died in 2004 - he combined humor, bombast, friendships and rivalries in a long and very...
...Hooper's new film, The Damned United, British actor Michael Sheen takes on Clough. Like the two roles he's best known for - Tony Blair in The Queen and David Frost in Frost/Nixon - the part was written for Sheen by British playwright Peter Morgan, their sixth collaboration. Unlike Blair, Clough is barely known outside Britain, and The Damned United is unlikely to get a wide release. That's a shame; great though Sheen's Blair and Frost were, his Clough is of an even higher order, combining psychological insight with dead-on accuracy. (See TIME's photo-esay "Soccer...
...Damned United is based on an extraordinary 2006 book by British novelist David Peace, an account from inside Clough's head of the 44 days in 1974 when he managed Leeds United, a bunch of talented thugs who were then the best club in England, while embroiled in a fierce rivalry with their former manager Don Revie (Colm Meaney) and smarting from a bitter quarrel with his best friend Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall). Sheen, 40, has just the pedigree for the part. In his youth, he was a talented-enough soccer player to be offered a trial by the London...