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“... billion Sun-like stars in the Milky Way. Scientists think that up to a quarter of them are orbited by planets where water could be present; if the same holds true in other galaxies, it would mean fifty sextillion or so planets in the observable universe where intelligent life may have evolved. The chances of Earth being the ...”

“... battle of Saintes in 1242, his bitterest enemy, Simon de Montfort, said to his face: ‘It would be a good thing if you were taken and shut away, as was done to Charles the Simple. There are houses with iron bars at Windsor that would be good for imprisoning you securely.’Henry was also affectionate ...”

“... including me and, somewhat later, Laura Freeman, first encountered the work of Miró and David Jones, Henry Moore, Brancusi, Ben Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Gaudier-Brzeska and others. Like Ede’s life it spans the century; but, more than that, for those of us who had not grown up in houses where there were grand pianos or interesting pebbles ...”

“... they decided to trepan his skull in order to relieve the pressure from what they thought must be a cranial fracture. The surgeons gouged the flesh around the wound but found the skull to be unfractured, and halted the operation in dismay. What could be done to help the stricken ...”

“... is illegally presented with a birthday cake. A Tory staffer throws up as the exit poll drops. David Cameron keeps his bladder full all night to achieve maximum focus during EU negotiations. The Bank of England takes emergency action to stave off financial panic following the ‘mini-budget’. David Bowie implores ...”

“... a charming letter of apology. The thought that this smiling young Scottish public schoolboy could be the next prime minister doesn’t cross either of our minds. On the other hand, John Birt is suitably impressed when I tell him that I actually met the great Lord Reith on the day of his extraordinary speech in the House of Lords likening commercial ...”

“... Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams have resisted the tendency of the last fifteen years or so by which the catalogues of major exhibitions have often been presented as major interpretative studies of the artist and his times. Constable is a catalogue, nothing more. It maximises our knowledge of the facts of Constable’s work and minimises their ...”

“... with a mission ... he was not quite clear in his mind about his mission, but always felt he must be up and doing.’ There are things to fill a day. While Gopu and his family still lived in Kabir Street Nag would take his nephew Tim to school. He has a daily appointment at Coomar’s Boeing Sari Centre, where he is an unpaid book-keeper. Coomar began his ...”

“... in the second as in the first novel, some chapters are narrated in the third person, others by one or another of the characters – a technique which may at first seem unnecessarily elaborate or insufficiently exploited, but in time comes to seem right, a gesture of respect for even small differences in perception. Miss Erdrich is as shrewd about ...”

“... settlement – he emerged in 1987, under the strains of a war against Iran which he appeared to be losing, as a charter member of what the Jordanians were describing as ‘the great moderate centre’. The other members of this new alignment were Egypt, Jordan and the PLO; it was part of the shift in policy towards Israel which the Palestine National ...”

“... later there is an angry letter to Blackmur on the subject, sent, however, to Laughlin, perhaps to be sent on. Blackmur is accused of ‘placid and conceited ignorance’: ‘you pups who are born omniscient ... and utterly indifferent to FACT never never never will understand the need for data before assumption.’ Three years later there is a reference to ...”

“... the father he knows, a lithe and animated Papa who is telling a joke in the Polish forbidden by Mama, and who is attached like a vibrant ghost to the sad overweight present-day Papa, the one who protests forlornly: ‘But there are some things I can only say in Polish.’ And if Papa-as-he-used-to-be has been lost in ...”

“... Larkin); and therefore that the best will proclaim its politics with pride. (The manoeuvre will be familiar to readers of contemporary literary theory.) This is clearly an inadequate conception of both literature and politics, because there can be no pristine state which poetry inhabits before it is sullied ...”

“... you please.’ In a 1936 review, Clifford Fadiman recommended that the prose of William Faulkner be taken with just such a hefty pinch of salt. Fatigued by ‘the Non-Stop or Life Sentence’ which he considered to be the ruin of Absalom, Absalom!, he declared that ‘all of Mr ...”