“... came to Ethiopia in 1769 to look for the source of the Nile and took away with him the Songs of David, Kibre Negest (‘Glory of the Kings’) and the Book of Enoch, which he no doubt considered as souvenirs or going-home presents to himself. As well as being a sacred artefact, the Kibre Negest relates much of Ethiopia’s early history. It was returned to ...”

“... might have added, we allow Eros its momentary triumph over Thanatos. But since the death wish means that we are gratified by destruction in real life, the enjoyment we gain from horror stories is also a heightened version of how we react to real-life alarms. Like the Freudian unconscious, Gothic is at once intense and mechanical, a realm of noble passion ...”

“... verse was much more than this. It was a rich political resource. Neo-Latin panegyrics were a good means of winning friends and pleasing princes. Latin verse was also the perfect medium for humanist poets who wished to go beyond the parochial constraints of national politics to address a wider audience of freer thinking international readers. Thomas More’s ...”

“... daunting difficulties, as do the political ramifications: identifying an origin automatically means pointing an accusing finger, and who would accept being stigmatised as the group or nation which gave Aids to the world? And once it became clear that Africa was the continent not just worst, but first ravaged, the problem became all the more sensitive. In ...”

“... programme of middle-income housing just as the federal government was promoting suburbanisation by means of home loans, highway construction and mortgage insurance, and in the two decades after 1945 unions built nearly 40,000 co-operative apartments. Central to this postwar Popular Front culture was the Communist Party, a significant presence in the city’s ...”

“... a good title. The word does not appear in the Chambers Dictionary but Webster’s tells us that it means ragweed in Britain, and knapweed, blueweed or blue vervain in the United States. We associate the word ‘weed’ with something contemptible, to be got rid of: but in America it also suggests toughness and freedom – so that they can say ‘militarism is ...”

“... Will not reign long as Amnesty’s new chief. Placed under stress he has been known to warp, As David Astor points out with some grief. I must say that Thorpe’s nerve gives cause to gawp. A decent silence should not be so brief. One does feel he might wear more sober togs And do things quietly in aid of dogs. Marcus Aurelius said there’s an age ...”

“... OWN PRIVATE DICTATOR-MUZZLER. POSITIVELY NO CONNECTION WITH ANY OTHER ESTABLISHMENT. By this means Low made the attempt to censor him a target for satire, and cunningly enlisted his readers in his defence. These examples illustrate a further aspect of Low’s humour: his generous use of words, not merely as captions but as a complete running ...”

“... their defenders ought to lean over backwards to be simple, clear and explicit. Donald Davidson and David Pears have recently made pioneering attempts to render elements of Freud’s theory in terms comprehensible to analytical philosophers and empirical psychologists. Instead of following their lead, Wollheim retreats to the more comfortable procedure of ...”

“... claiming a kind of coincidence with it’. The novel, he says, is ‘social intercourse by other means’. The same conviction is enforced in Bayley’s Selected Essays, a gathering of his fairly recent writings. The writers he deals with, except for Pushkin, are those whose work has happened to come up for review: a new collection, a biography, a ...”

“... Clennell Wilkinson, the pompous and plagiaristic Ellis Roberts. And there were writers who, like David Garnett, simply couldn’t manage the world of journalistic deadlines. Today, leftish journals face an ever-widening gulf between the concerns of ‘cultural politics’ and the day-to-day agenda of professional politicians, which remains overwhelmingly ...”

“... patrician of next-century information capitalism, Gates has been talking to everyone, including David Letterman, about what the future – guided by Microsoft, its controlling partner – has in store. With his transformation into a Third Wave Pollyanna, Chairman Bill is sounding remarkably like Speaker Newt, and his new book The Road Ahead has much in ...”

“... Ayacucho, one of the most backward and isolated towns of the Peruvian Andes, whose name in Quechua means ‘Corner of the Dead’, in memory of those who fell in 1824 in the decisive battle between Bolivar’s forces, under Sucre, and those loyal to the Spanish Crown. Thus Ayacucho can be considered the birthplace of the modern Peruvian state, and may yet ...”

“... haunted demeanour of a beaten man. The desperate logic of America’s sound-bite democracy means that between now and polling day Bush might try to revive his flagging popularity by resuming military strikes against the man he now refers to as the ‘Merchant of Death’. But if American lives were to be lost as a consequence, the electoral damage ...”

“... his lodge. The club, a body turned in on itself and having its own particular rules, provided a means of cementing a society divided by the rage of party. Is it too fanciful to see Mr Spectator’s Club as a model for Masonry? Addison, a staunch Whig, showed how shared conviviality – tempered at times with a mild raillery – could bind such opposites as ...”