“... ones, and especially if they agree independently, one must begin by believing them. For instance, Peter Sawyer’s calculation of manpower by number of horses transportable founders on the fact that a minimum number of men are needed even to crew a horse-transporter. As for the nature of Viking armies, Smyth comments drily that too many scholars seem to have ...”

“... Quite a few blue-chip Stalinists are here gently described as ‘left-wing’. It’s odd to read one of them being described as ‘a fiery freedom fighter’ – actually a blustering, hard-drinking tankie who owed me a lot of money. Similarly, the Fifties newspapers, the Guardian and New Age, are described as ‘left-wing’ papers, which would have ...”

“... As English remarks, the Hooker family, and the conflicts provoked by Helen’s headstrong ways, read like the plot of a Marquand novel. It did not have a happy ending, but the beginning was romantic: a runaway marriage in 1935, a house in O’Malley’s beloved Mayo, involvement in Dublin’s theatrical and literary scene, while the publication of On ...”

“... verses, and he/she wants to understand, face this grave on Beeston Hill, your back to Leeds, and read the chiselled epitaph I’ve planned: Beneath your feet’s a poet, then a pit.Poetry supporter, if you’re here to findhow poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look ...”

“... create, to succeed and to greatness. Now a king, now a jester, part Puck, part Palladio, sometimes Peter Pan, sometimes Napoleon, the public and private Lutyens were uneasily juxtaposed: the architect who could synthesise discrepant styles and harmonise spatial dissonances with such unfailing assurance and panache never really got his act together as an ...”

“... Tsvetaeva are none the less very different kinds of poet. It would be possible, even desirable, to read and reread Akhmatova’s complex masterpiece, Poem without a Hero, in a state of complete ignorance about the poet herself, although the poem is full of cryptic intimacies and references to friends and events, both public and private. But Tsvetaeva’s ...”

“... in the Sixties – which he does with considerable confidence and resource. But when the book is read, one does not feel that a synoptic view of a century’s artistic activity has been recorded: the Lamberts were, after all, marginal figures – over-talented de-spoilers of their own talent. Their achievements look smaller with the lapse of time, and if it ...”

“... a slight resentment towards translations, and in his clever ‘Poem Waiting to be Translated’, Peter Porter asks: Why not remember the heroes of hard situations, those who answered inquisitors in fresh parables, whose lyrical rejoinders are assembled here in memorial Penguins? Porter is glancing at the work of Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rozewicz, and ...”

“... in Europe: they have been virtually eliminated, according to Mitford, in the United States. Peter Chamberlen, a Huguenot barber-surgeon whose family settled in London, invented the forceps in 1588. The family kept it a secret for over a hundred years, travelling about to attend the births of those wealthy enough to pay for their ministrations. Not only ...”

“... meeting-house, Ballymoney First Presbyterian Church. We’re filming a history teacher read from Lorimer’s New Testament in Scots, the passage where Peter denies Christ and a servant quean says: ‘yer Galille twang outs ye.’ The interior of the church seems very military. I count 11 crowns among the ...”

“... and satisfying menu; but the reader who misses the great names of the period should be warned that Peter Eisenman, Richard Rogers, Alvaro Siza, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas (along with the central figure in Barcelona’s historic renewal, Oriol Bohigas) are all represented by substantial essays or interviews. I am not sure whether the distribution of these ...”

“... For that reason, only experimental solutions [Adorno means productions, but he could be read as proposing also the need for experimental, i.e. self-conscious and ironic and non-literal, interpretations] are justified today; only what injures the Wagner orthodoxy is true. The defenders of the grail shouldn’t get so worked up about it; Wagner’s ...”

“... more than a cosmetic choice. Displaying all the insouciant condescension of a Walpolean oligarch, Peter Mandelson mused that ‘the era of pure representative democracy is coming slowly to an end.’ Each party adopted the same techniques. If they were aware that they were making the political class look alien, uncaring and fake, there was no electoral ...”

“... Minutes later, he picked up a copy of Severnaya Kommuna, the organ of the Petrograd Soviet, and read a rant by Zinoviev in praise of the Party monopoly on power which derided the ‘fallacious democratic liberties demanded by the counter-revolution’. Serge smothered his misgivings – War Communism required many allowances to be made – but he knew how ...”

“... and although he cracked, he never broke into madness. The prisoners at Vincennes were free to read and write all they wished, and Sade’s extensive personal library was crucial in preserving the core of his identity. Books further excited the ideas that made sleep elusive. Insomniacs are as big liars as fishermen, but whatever his exaggerations, Sade was ...”