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“... Charles Taylor is, by his own admission, a hedgehog. Though the essays in these two volumes range over a variety of topics – the concept of a person, meaning, the value of cognitive psychology, sexuality as a mode of political control – they all argue for one basic idea: that the conceptions of objectivity and scientific method which we have inherited from the 17th century are unable to give us an account of ourselves ...”

“... Christopher Bollas is perhaps the most prolific and widely read psychoanalytic author at work today. It’s easy to see why this should be so. His books are written in a conversational style that quickly establishes a friendly, frank relation with his reader, and he exudes the confidence of a master practitioner: he is above all a man of (clinical) experience ...”

“... If there is a single theme running through these essays it is the importance of our commitment to truth. Not just to the truth about ourselves and our relations with others, or to the truth about the world: our commitment must be to the concept of truth as central to human wellbeing. This, of course, runs counter to one of the philosophical clichés of our time: that there is no such thing as objective truth, that truth is a superstition we no longer need and would be better off without ...”

“... realise. We don’t merely change over time, we (more grandly) grow. In this collection of essays Jonathan Lear, a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, wants to show us that it is what he calls the ‘logic of the soul’ to want open-mindedness; and this is because, in his view (and in the tradition of psychoanalysis that he values), the logic of the soul ...”

“... courage or the luck – from a project one had taken to be one’s own. ‘A courageous person,’ Jonathan Lear has suggested, ‘has a proper orientation towards what is shameful and what is fearful.’ We tend to think of giving up, in the ordinary way, as a lack of courage, as an improper or embarrassing orientation towards what is shameful and ...”

“... commonsensical approach to the text, still exerts a palpable influence on Shakespeare scholars: Jonathan Bate’s introduction to this new edition of the Complete Works makes regular appeals to Johnson’s authority and Johnson’s precedent. The differences between the circumstances and the procedures of the two editions, however, are at least as revealing ...”

“... twenty years Agate’s senior. ‘We have each our private ideal of Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Lear,’ said Archer. ‘Every actor who undertakes them has to pass through a triple ordeal, encountering, first our imagination, kindled by Shakespeare; second our idealised memory of performances which used to please our, perhaps, unripe judgment; third our ...”

“... the only work which he records as reading on three separate occasions in these last years is King Lear: ‘Marvellous!’ But he had no delusions about his power on earth. He knew that he was as dominant, and was in the eyes of many as god-like, as Lear had been. This awareness requires us to tread carefully in interpreting ...”

“... in Hazlitt’s own outlook and essays. ‘The Example of Hazlitt’ occupies the second part of Jonathan Bate’s book, by far its longest section, and the whole literary atmosphere of Regency London, seen through Hazlitt’s eyes and those of his two critics, is alive with Shakespearean character and quotation, with the wiles of Shylock and the arrogance ...”

“... statement of intent. The essays concentrate on Henry IV, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, King Lear and The Tempest. Greenblatt’s method is to juxtapose famous ‘literary’ texts with lesser-known, ‘non-literary’ texts, such as Jacques Duval’s Des Hermaphrodits (1603), Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (also ...”

“... to the end.’ Lyrics such as ‘Grange Boy’ and ‘Dark Glasses’, with its epigraph from King Lear (‘And take upon’s the mystery of things / As if we were God’s spies’), prepare us for the previously unpublished long poem that occupies the second half of the book. Its title is ‘The Inquisitor’, an allusion to Browning’s poem about a ...”

“... and responding to the language of passion with marvellous intensity (his note to himself on Lear’s ‘reason not the need’ reads: ‘The tranquillity from the first stun permitting Lear to REASON – recite this’). But the edition is a monument to a kind of criticism the premises of which now look ...”

“... one of Enright’s touchstones, records how he was so shocked by Cordelia’s death in King Lear that he could never bear to reread the play’s last scenes until forced to as a Shakespeare editor. In ‘Poetical Justice’ Enright’s speaker presents himself as similarly disturbed by tragedy’s unfairness: It will be many years before I read again ...”

“... power, to bend the world to one’s will. When Farage travelled to Bulgaria earlier this year with Jonathan Rugman for a Channel 4 News special report, what was most striking was how far he was trapped by his own style. He smiles a lot, and laughs, especially when he thinks he has been clever, as, for example, when he points to the former Communist Party ...”

“... Barry Webb has assembled shows Blunden going out to bat with Rupert Hart-Davis, in a match between Jonathan Cape and the Alden Press. That was in 1938. Blunden looks miniature, a frail determined Don Quixote with eagle nose and jaw, who had persuaded the burly Yorkshireman as they set out for the crease together not to wear batting gloves, which were ...”