“... book seems to have been hopelessly unfinished at the time of his death. In Capote’s case, we may be forgiven for asking if the fame didn’t far outstrip the promise, and if his was rather less a major talent dissipated than a minor gift cleverly marketed. Taking the generous view of Capote’s talent and importance after the publication of his first ...”

“... forums with a couple of dozen other stalwarts to listen to them – the likes of Séamus Healy, Richard Boyd Barrett and Thomas Pringle, all now catapulted into the Dáil with a mandate to disturb the political peace. While the Fianna Fáil aristocracy were punching their cards at local meetings and stealthily ascending the party ladder, these newcomers ...”

“... play in structuring American society – while at the same time reminding us that those beliefs may be rational but they’re not true. As Tzvetan Todorov pointed out a long time ago, the fact that some women were once thought of as witches and sometimes burned as witches did not make them witches, even socially constructed ones, and the conceptual ...”

“... She has been celebrated as a stylish genre defier, in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith and Richard Price – and her books sell. French’s opening salvo was leaving one of the chief mysteries in her first novel, In the Woods, unsolved. Since then, she has demonstrated remarkable range. The classic detective series follows a single familiar ...”

“... employed by scientific journals. The case for restricting an industrial pollutant, for example, may be substantial, and urgent for public health, and at the same time incomplete. The Data Quality Act and its peer-review provisions, Mooney points out, ‘simply give industry groups, which already have a right to challenge final regulations in court, multiple ...”

“... suggests that ‘indifference and bafflement are today more common than hostility,’ and that may be so. But there has been some excellent work done on Pound recently: Richard Sieburth’s Instigations, Leon Surette’s A Light from Eleusis, and now Alexander’s manageably-sized study of the whole corpus of the ...”

“... could break as well as make alliances. Village holidays and male fellowship in the alehouse may have provided an opportunity to affirm ties despite differences in wealth. And as more formal associational life grew over the course of the 18th century, new affiliations, such as friendly societies, gradually created social bonds that enabled a different ...”

“... Madox Ford’ and William Carlos Williams’s ‘To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven’. And you may say that his luck holds: for Robert Green is also an admirer, but his book is thoroughly sensible, unbedazzled and discriminating, the book of someone who has heard of other writers and is in no kind of ‘Special relationship’ to Ford. What he has set out ...”

“... frequently implied than invoked. The preferred manner is that of indirection. While Mr Sparrow may delight in a guise of bluff, non-specialist plain-speaking, there is irony in his soul. His most unguarded admissions of belief are often found in parentheses, just as his most joyful attacks may be confined to ...”

“... 1894, whose reasoning, as Stephen Walker points out, is extremely rum. It rules that ‘in no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the exercise of one which stands lower on the psychological scale.’ Walker reasonably remarks that it is not even clear whether explanations of ...”

“... who has wondered whether the history of the United States can be forced into a Thatcherite mould may well find the book of interest. Johnson announces at the outset that he comes to American history ‘completely fresh’, with no qualifications other than a love of the country and a willingness to immerse himself in the literature of its past. It’s true ...”

“... diaries get their reward. If we see the politics of the Sixties more from the point of view of Richard Crossman than, say, of Michael Stewart, the reason is that Crossman kept a diary and Stewart did not. Nevertheless, the possibility of publication is seldom the only reason for keeping a diary. Like any habit that becomes addictive, diary-writing has its ...”

“... the work. And she explores this with as much questing and well-furnished unobtrusive cleverness as Richard Sewall brought to his two-volume life of Emily Dickinson – another ‘dotty spinster’, who wrote of her own life: ‘Nothing has happened but loneliness.’ Stevie Smith would not, I think, have said that, though she was much aware of loneliness. Her ...”

“... could he have argued that he was doing his country much of a favour. A third consideration may obtain. What if, as is generally the case, your country has its repulsive and attractive sides, and so do your friends, but there is something wrong with you? Some crucial bit of the moral or the rational animal that is, in your own case, simply ...”

“... outré authorities on pop music (such as Joe Orton) and a few anti-pop pieces (by Paul Johnson and Richard Hoggart, among others). Liveliest and most useful are the contemporary reports documenting specific occasions: Elvis Presley recording ‘Hound Dog’, Decca turning down the Beatles, the Rolling Stones at Altamont, the Osmonds at the Rainbow Theatre, the ...”