“... 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 ...”

“... Knussen recognised the affinity, and coupled poems by Trakl and Plath in his Second Symphony, and Peter Maxwell Davies has also set Trakl to music. This new collection is the most substantial so far published in England, and should finally win Trakl wider recognition. Alexander Stillmark’s selection of around 125 poems, including most of the major ones, is ...”

“... retired now but that’s what I was doing when I started writing this: I wrote and I waited to get Peter’s dinner out of the oven. Peter got 24-hour care, and I did three seven-hour shifts a week. I enjoyed the connectedness that working always gave me, the benchmarks at the end of every shift: pill box empty, kitchen ...”

“... species in the world and now critically endangered in the north-east Atlantic.) Personally, I’ll read pretty much any old rubbish about sharks and absolutely anything about shark attacks. We shark enthusiasts are usually caught between news reports, stupid websites (‘Aquarium Worker Bitten on Face by Shark!’) and the scientific stuff, which can be dry. I ...”

“... the consigliore of radicalism, was master of ceremonies. Jack Kerouac, too self-conscious to read, acted as cheerleader: ‘Go! Go! Go!’ He passed out slopping gallon jugs of Californian Burgundy. There had been poetry readings in the Bay Area before this and the Six Gallery was hardly virgin territory. The space had once been a community art venture ...”

“... Council. Anyone being groomed for the India Service and, indeed, for the Colonial Service had to read his works. From Lyall in India to Swettenham in Malaya, Shepstone in Natal, Cromer in Egypt, Lugard in Nigeria and Uganda, Harold MacMichael in Sudan and Donald Cameron in Tanganyika, colonial administrators throughout the empire absorbed his arguments ...”

“... italicised ‘No.’ Yet much as the professional amateurism of travel writing requires him to read up on his destinations without appearing too knowing about them, he keeps a wary eye on the assumptions and prejudices he represents himself as having. When a schoolgirl in Nanjing expresses pity for some chicks preserved in formaldehyde, he realises that ...”