“... has wonderful titles: ‘Your News Hour Is Now Two Hours’ or ‘Cardio Room, Young Women’s Christian Association’ or ‘Your Premiums Will Never Increase’. As good as anything by Eno). I am floundering. The only reservation I have about the book is that it leaves out a number of other, equally marvellous poems. Perhaps that’s where I should ...”

“... has been blessed with a fine landscape, and God in his providence has arranged the mountains in a ring around the coastline in an egregiously unsuccessful attempt to stop the natives from getting out. Irish writers in the 19th century, however, were not remarkable for their appreciation of Nature as a source of beauty. There is no Irish equivalent of ...”

“... it, and it was not until October 2000 that it was brought into force. By then all hats were in the ring: liberal opinion had hailed a new dawn, and conservative opinion, both left and right, had predicted a bonanza for cranks and lawyers. It was a safe bet that neither would be proved wholly right, but there was no hope, and there will be none for a few years ...”

“... Princess Charlotte’s funeral. Below him through the sunny autumn mist he heard the church bells ring then all at once subside – ‘a distant sinking like aeolian harps and I immediately imagined the people all in at prayer’. The Regency city was a tolerant, prosperous place. It was rich and stable while the Continent suffered in the aftermath of ...”

“... was known in the neighbourhood as a loner who collected odds and ends, as a silent member of the Christian Science Church, as a ‘scary kook’, as a haunted-looking man who was friendly to children. One visitor to Utopia Parkway recalls seeing a little girl walking across the lawn towards Cornell. She was holding one of his boxes. ‘I’m tired of this ...”

“... Yes, sir, banknotes, the largest denomination that existed in France then, which was enormous.’ Christian Zervos is recollecting the day that Picasso took him, as a favoured confidant, to his vaults in the Banque de France. The fortune Zervos was allowed to glimpse in the mid-1930s had ridden out the Wall Street crash, and had been accumulating since before ...”

“... remotely like that of the man with the tonsure? But brilliant, knowing … And more deeply Christian (if that’s what one wanted, and surely one did) than even dear Bouts. More compassionate and ironic about our exit from original sin. More modern in its picture of sanctity.Bosch​ – speaking now to the heart of his work, to the people in the ...”

“... recover far more easily than the white and coloured poor. Consider as an Armageddonist the Christian Coalition founder (and one-time candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination) Pat Robertson. A giant meteor and a mile-high tsunami destroy Los Angeles in his 1995 The End of the Age, leaving survivalists to battle Satan (now President of the ...”

“... more in the 1980s, and for the last twenty years she has been the darling of early music lovers, Christian feminists, holistic health practitioners and New Age spiritual seekers. During her 900th birthday festivities in 1998, pilgrims flocked by the busload to the Rhineland abbey she founded, the home today of a flourishing Benedictine community. By the time ...”

“... great reforming Mayor and Hitler’s mentor in the demagogic uses of anti-semitism, no part of the Ring, or any other street, was named after Freud. The telephone rang. Not at all, said a spokesman from the municipality: there is now a Sigmund Freud Park; there had been one for all of a fortnight, though this appeared to be the first public acknowledgement of ...”

“... seen himself in a great or favourable one.’ Generally even his sourest observations carry some ring of truth: ‘Sir Thomas [Robinson] had been bred in German courts, and was rather restored than naturalised to the genius of that country: he had German honour, loved German politics, and could explain himself as little as if he spoke only German. He might ...”

“... grasped at the last when his power of speech was gone to indicate the confirmation of his assured Christian belief. Legend has it that Cranmer grew the beard as a sign of mourning for the man who had given him power and authority, but, as MacCulloch shrewdly notes, there is another way of looking at the beard: ‘It was a break with the past for a clergyman ...”

“... than anyone is of their nails growing.’ It’s revealing that the loam-moulder uses Yorke’s Christian name: obviously his upper-class provenance wasn’t held against him. There was a similar familiarity from other members of the firm in the recent BBC 2 Bookmark programme on Green. Green’s time at Birmingham was clearly the basis of his lifelong ...”

“... throughout the exhibition, hoards and weapons: axes, spearheads, swords and shields, helmets and ring mail. The smith clearly took as much pride in his work as the carpenter. The Vale of York hoard, which dates from the 920s, contains silver coins, a Frankish liturgical cup, arm rings and what’s called ‘hack silver’. Sunhild Kleingärtner and Gareth ...”

“... operating in the Helimòdhi area. The adults can protect themselves, Miha tells me; they form a ring and bellow and rear and threaten with their horns, a hazard that bears appreciate. But on sloping ground they are in danger: the bear can use its agility and strength to push them over; the mothers with calves get isolated because they won’t abandon their ...”