“... Helen Demidenko, as she styled herself (Helen Darville as she in fact is), might have seemed to be one of the favourites for the prize; indeed, the press was understandably anxious to know whether we had intended shortlisting the book, and only withdrawn it under pressure. In fact, we had determined weeks before the Demidenko affair reached its final phase ...”

“... David Freedberg’s new book is illustrated with wonderful, detailed drawings and engravings of plants, fungi, fossils, birds, insects and animals – nearly all made in the 17th century. Freedberg is an art historian; the starting point of his book is a dream he had sometime before 1986 in which Anthony Blunt appeared holding a drawing of an orange ...”

“... The 1990s were characterised by the astonishing market penetration of products such as mobile phones, Microsoft Windows and Starbucks coffee shops, but an even more remarkable example of booming sales and global spread is the massive rise in the consumption of Ecstasy. In 1988 Ecstasy was a secret; now it’s a cliché ...”

“... under a green-shaded lamp. He has said a good deal already – the little boy who wants to be like his father, the sheltered child who doesn’t need to know the time or even the season because James, the always reliable butler, deals with that, the illusion of a dedication to poetry. Adrian Wright, in this new biography, refers several times to ...”

“... It was slowest in Russia and Russian Poland – though even there it had advanced substantially by the First World War. To write the history of the Jews in modern Europe is, therefore, like writing a biography of the Cheshire Cat: the historian’s impossible task is to catch the substance behind the fading smile. Before I opened this new volume in the ...”

“... A short film directed by Pasolini in 1966, La Terra Vista dalla Luna, opens with a caption printed over a fixed image: ‘Seen from the moon, this movie . . . is nothing and has not been created by anybody . . . But since we are on planet earth, it might be better to let you know that it is a fable written by Pier Paolo Pasolini ...”

“... maintain a purely formalist position about the ‘meaning’ of music without it ever being tested by the tangible menace of a censorship which rejected the style of that music and would certainly have taken steps to enforce that rejection if the composer had ever placed himself in its power. Shostakovich, on the other hand, was a Soviet citizen from the age ...”

“... vote in the face of the racist measures that had effectively disenfranchised them. They were met by a phalanx of state troopers, wearing gas masks and brandishing truncheons, who ordered the marchers to disperse. Lewis and his followers stood their ground. The violent response of the troopers – Lewis was beaten unconscious – was captured on ...”

“... were, with reason, displeased. It is hard to see how any movement could have been sustained by someone so liable to bite the hand that fed him. His novel The Apes of God doesn’t just mock the artistic competition, but also some of those who had given him money when he sorely needed it. ‘Froanna (Portrait of the Artist’s Wife)’ (1937) All ...”

“... entrance in the Whitechapel Gallery’s front on Whitechapel High Street has been open to passers-by; there isn’t even a step to interrupt the level way from footpath to gallery. It has never been intimidating. It was made for the use and pleasure of people who live and work nearby, but it is also – and always has been – an institution of national ...”

“... misreading) the Quran, and making interminable speeches to his acolytes, possibly punctuated by bursts of insane laughter. It’s unlikely that the forthcoming book by bin Laden’s first wife and fourth son, which emphasises his love of gardening and the World Service, will do much to change that.* Even Blofeld had a ...”

“... bestrafte Brudermord soon after its first appearance. Certainly once Shakespeare was naturalised by the Schlegel-Tieck translation and others in the early 1800s as ‘the third German classic’, the status of his Wittenberg-educated prince as a national allegory in waiting was assured. In a poem of 1844 Ferdinand Freiligrath lamented that ‘Deutschland ist ...”

“... It appears to have been designed in order to provide cover for the military surge being plotted by General Stanley McChrystal, the new white hope of a beleaguered White House. McChrystal seems to have inverted the old Clausewitzian maxim: he genuinely believes that politics is a continuation of war by other means. It was ...”

“... in the press and are entered for prizes. Which is why, over the years, book cover design ceased to be an offshoot of book design (where typographers do their stuff) and became a graphic arena in which art directors commission all sorts of specialists. Photographers, illustrators, calligraphers, collagists, model-makers and typographers, singly or in ...”

“... as some pay more taxes, both absolutely and proportionally, to fund government services. There can be no doubt that the Coalition policy on student debt is ‘progressive’ in the sense that some will pay (back) more than others depending on how much they earn after graduation. But how progressive? The repayment scheme seems to ...”