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“... reminding himself that he is not Shakespeare, that the twangling instruments the Lady hears in the wood are not quite the beautiful sounds Caliban hears and fears not in The Tempest. That interior poetic dialogue is the reason Milton can get into your head, and seem to be (as he was for the majority of the Romantic poets) the voice of English poetic tradition ...”

“... opportunities for Plautus’ favourite style of ‘buffoonery’. Some later scholars (such as Christopher Stace and Jean-Christian Dumont) have suggested that the slave already played a more important role in New Comedy than Fraenkel realised, partly on the basis of more passages of Menander that were discovered and published after Fraenkel’s ...”

“... The only surfaces with a good echo are the ones on the boat itself – fibreglass, metal, wood. And when the engine is running it lays a steady thrum over any lower sounds. What that means in practice is that all the sibilants get knocked out of speech: Nyoupuenerou? Ucuthemooinroe? Ilanacoupleougarleae? Where Dillon relied on continued literary ...”

“... with interest. Since it opened to the public in 1985, the Saatchi collection in St John’s Wood has become a focus of what’s called the contemporary art debate. With every purchase, names are made and names are called. But Saatchi’s taste, his collecting policy, is eclectic and elusive. So much art, of so many kinds, has passed into and sometimes ...”

“... world and constantly execrated but never actually discussed. An exception is a little speech by St Christopher, the AA name of one of the alcoholics put in charge of Mungo, who makes a link with the upper classes, not an unusual suggestion in itself, but the angle is new:Well, they’re aw at it. It’s what us boys do when we’re alone. A bit of ...”

“... and not the real deal. Culture of Complaint may prove to be the most influential such screed since Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. Hughes is much funnier than Lasch, and probably happier – his strings of metaphor are evidence that the author enjoys his work. Nimble yet lunkish, his sense of humour favours sarcasm and the well-turned ...”

“... grandee, the times have made it as natural for Heaney to play the man in the corner, the evasive wood-kern who can cast ‘the stones of silence’ into the gabble of accusation and hysteria. That is in itself now a social task, a social blessing. At the same time, while denying fanaticism, it also disclaims art’s traditional potency. In the cunning of ...”

“... led him in the eyes of many to betray his left-wing views altogether. Such, no doubt, is how Christopher Hitchens will be remembered. The resemblances to George Orwell, on whom Hitchens has written so admiringly,* are obvious enough, though so are some key differences. Orwell was a kind of literary proletarian who lived in dire straits for most of his ...”

“... into war as that damp crowded quiet churchyard. Most of the names scrawled in pencil on bits of wood were English; where the names had been washed off their little forage caps hung on a stick … A Tommy was digging a grave. Two English officers with their caps in their hands were looking at a grave, just covered.By contrast, despite her pleas and those of ...”

“... and resourceful, Gordon has interviewed many witnesses, and had the cooperation of Maurice Haigh-Wood, Vivien’s brother; she draws on Vivien’s diaries in the Bodleian, the copyright of which, as we learn from the Letters, belongs to Eliot’s widow. And, familiar with virtually all the archives, she has read a great many of the letters. Her ...”

“... strong, warm and macerated in phlegm. He had the genial, tannin glaze of a resting Stone: Ronnie Wood morphing into Bill Wyman. A heavy silver wedding ring. The ever-present mobile phone. I’d given Mr Nice a first reading. And that’s how Marks presented himself. How he charmed the uncharmable, the warders at Terre Haute Penitentiary: his ‘usual trick ...”

“... hardships en route. But she also proposes an association with ‘clog’ – ‘a thick piece of wood; block … Anything that impedes’, and, finally, ‘a wooden-soled shoe’. Shakespeare uses ‘clog’ in this sense many times: in Coriolanus, Volumnia cries out: ‘I would the gods had nothing else to do/But to confirm my curses! …/it would unclog my ...”

“... theologians who are meanwhile busy inventing Christian metaphysics: ‘There’s a solid chunk of wood waiting for them to have their silly heads knocked against.’ And, once discovered, the mere existence of the crucifix in all its solidity somehow comes to be an adequate proof for the whole Christian system. ‘It states a fact,’ Waugh says on the last ...”

“... recorded it): ‘The best-dressed woman in New York.’ This is not the sort of ambition James Wood had in mind when he recently suggested in the LRB (4 January) that we owe half of English literature to the aspirant mother. Of course, those sensitive and ambitious women are usually the mothers of lower-class males; and in Wharton’s case, as in that of ...”

“... of the poets – Charles Tomlinson, or David Gascoyne, or Robert Conquest, or John Holloway, or Christopher Middleton, or Geoffrey Hill – stood for a world that was fully England. Looking at the list of poets was like having one’s Irish nose pushed up against the polished glass of a posh window in some imaginary Big House. But it was clear to me that ...”