“... psychological or a physical illness. Sceptics, such as Elaine Showalter, an American professor of English whose 1997 book about hysteria included a controversial chapter on CFS, point out that, despite extensive research, nobody yet knows what causes ME. It often occurs after a virus, but there is no evidence of prolonged viral infection. There is still no ...”

“... varied aspects to explore, as was shown in Michael Holquist’s Dostoevsky and the Novel and by Richard Peace’s remarkable examination, in Dostoevsky: The Major Novels, of its catacomb of religious symbolism and clash of hidden dogmas. It is a quarry for quite separate lines and kinds of study, like a work of the Renaissance. Like a play of that time, as ...”

“... under review here. Die Logik der Forschung was published in 1934 but was not translated into English until 1959. The Postscript has been circulated like samizdat since 1957 but is only now available in published form. Of its three volumes, the second has been discussed in these columns already (Vol. 5, No 15), while the third is on quantum physics. The ...”

“... voices; Salford’s city fathers complained that she was bringing their city into disrepute; Richard Hoggart, whose landmark study of working-class culture, The Uses of Literacy, had appeared the previous year, objected that Delaney’s characters were ‘not typical’ of the working class. Very tall, striking and photogenic, Delaney found herself ...”

“... pistols, machetes, spears, and bows and arrows. No official death toll was recorded, though one English officer described ‘quantities of dead natives killed during the fight’. The British force discharged about four million rounds. The following month, a ‘remarkable’ report in the Portsmouth Evening News, based on interviews with returning ...”

“... Purity. Man Two is successful, manipulative, priapic, with an aridity to his heart: the rock star Richard Katz in Freedom, the ‘famous internet outlaw’ Andreas Wolf in Purity. What seemed in The Corrections like a generous sharing of perspective between characters who, being related, can’t avoid acknowledging that they see things differently – the ...”

“... my life I woke up wanting to do something to make it happen faster.’ As a schoolgirl Ypi reads Richard Wright, learns about the capitalist enemies who want to turn her beloved country into a shopping mall, and encounters odd European tourists, some of whom seem to pity her and some of whom treat her like a precious specimen. Small anxieties balloon in her ...”

“... Schoenbaum. He was right, though no one was especially impressed by the stunt; Schoenbaum had the English Department secretary reply to the letter. When Foster finished the book, he submitted it, was turned down again, and pulled the same trick again, this time identifying the anonymous reader as Stanley Wells. Foster wrote to Wells, without letting on how he ...”

“... The deaths of his brother and sister accentuated this. His older brother, Joe, died over the English Channel (British radar upset the delicate wiring on his explosive-laden plane: the American bases in the South of England had turned their radar off but had not asked their allies to do the same). And he lost his favourite sister, Kathleen, a fellow rebel ...”

“... son of a high official working for the shah. Homa Katouzian, his previous biographer in English, ascribes his consistent opposition to ‘any concession to any foreign power’ to this early impression of popular anger at European encroachments on Iran’s sovereignty. Mossadegh, whose family belonged to the nobility and who was honoured as a child ...”

“... with the manner (so Etonians said) of a Harrovian’ – but also over the blunter evocation of Richard Hoggart as ‘the grammar school extramural lecturer’. Our Age had its traditions, ‘was a gentleman’, as Kermode says, and pretty much ran the whole show, ‘being powerful yet negligent’. Our Age also turned out to be rather keener on Margaret ...”

“... and make-up probably owed more to stage adaptations of Frankenstein than to the novel itself. Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein, which opened on 28 July 1823, ran for 37 performances in London, with Mr T.P. Cooke a great success in the role of –––, as the play called Frankenstein’s creature. Mary Shelley, who went ...”

“... life of the mediatised book group: Oprah’s Book Club had just returned from a year’s break and Richard and Judy were about to launch a UK version. (It was also a good year for coffee: by 2003 there were 425 Starbucks branches in the UK, up from 50 in 1998.) Consumers across the Anglophone world faithfully bought books, nearly finished them and then joined ...”

“... The Power Elite, The Organisation Man, The Feminine Mystique and The Making of the English Working Class – you’ll find they depict a world moving towards an almost claustrophobic cohesion. Classes consolidate, whites push down on blacks, blue collars are hemmed in by white collars, and grey flannel suits march down city streets lined with ...”

“... ragged plastic: a loud fake, a deterrent to keep random passerines and crapping gulls off honest English soil. It shrieked and hissed in the wind, lacking claws and beak. The passengers heading for the pier didn’t even notice it. If you travel against the inrushing City surge, the cattled mob decanted at Fenchurch Street station, a railway excursion to the ...”