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“... in the scholarly world despite this, chiefly for his expertise on the length of the Roman foot. Ingrid Rowland makes Colocci one of the heroes of her remarkable book. She describes his failings with sympathy as well as humour, but also reminds us of the immense intellectual excitement that lay behind what could seem to be mere pedantry. Colocci was ...”

“... as the Hundred Days Offensive: 122,000 were injured; 26,000 were killed. The monument is a 180-foot-high Doric pillar made of granite; the figure of Liberty stands at the top, with its right arm raised. Before the tower are four flights of steps made of white stone which lead up to the column’s entrance. Walls to the left and right name the smaller ...”

“... work; policy-making has therefore been particularly difficult. But even a conventional virus – foot and mouth, discovered in 1897 and studied intensively for a century – was still capable of throwing off a variant that penetrated long-standing defences, and made official contingency plans look like hasty scribbles on the back of an envelope. The new ...”

“... In the months that followed, alarm seemed to grip the police, who felt they were on the back foot. Special Branch – the covert unit of the Met which gathered intelligence on perceived state-subversives – began sending weekly reports to the Home Office predicting what protesters would do next. In one report, a Special Branch chief inspector, Conrad ...”

“... were indications, sounds and airs, that the black magic of the Mafia was known to the island. Paul Castellano was a Staten Island householder who can rarely have set foot on the ferry and who was eventually to stay at home, save for the occasional progress by limousine across the bridge. The mansion he lived ...”

“... Sir Paul Marshall​ ’s emergence as a right-wing media tycoon has been rapid. A decade ago he was a Lib Dem donor; now he owns the house journal of the Conservative Party. Immediately after he bought the Spectator for an inflated £100 million last September, its chairman, Andrew Neil, resigned, signing off with a barbed tweet about editorial independence ...”

“... with jumping clowns, a whole group with actors playing and replaying a domestic argument – and Paul McCarthy’s Rocky, in which, gloved up, the artist hits himself. In Shaman-Girl’s Prayer Mariko Mori, in platinum wig and silver plastic suit, stands in Osaka airport turning a crystal ball in her hands. The video she has made of herself is projected on ...”

“... and notes that, on an outing to Torcello, the superstitious composer refused ‘even to put his foot’ on the cemetery island of San Michele at which the boat was stopping en route, and where he lies today. His journey to San Michele had begun in earnest nonetheless: ‘1956 was the crisis year of Stravinsky’s later life,’ Craft tells us in one of ...”

“... a serum that converted him instantly from an asthmatic weakling into an all too credible hulk, a foot taller than he was, and ready to pose for a body-building ad. But this is offered to us as the magic of science rather than part of the wilder stretches of scientific fantasy. ‘Magic’ is perhaps the key word here, or whatever word we find for ...”

“... One can see that the ass has already entered the stream – the torchlight catches a ripple by its foot. On the far left, light from a fire two herdsmen have made carves a foliage-lined hollow out of the night, gilding at its edges the heads and flanks of animals and the surface of the stream. The only strong colour is Joseph’s red coat; the rest is ...”

“... sentence with the inversion ‘Outside I stand,’ it calls to mind Muir’s opening line: ‘One foot in Eden still, I stand.’ The first poem in Jennings’s New Collected Poems begins: ‘The radiance of that star that leans on me/Was shining years ago.’ Norman MacCaig might have written that in the 1950s. It was in this decade that Jennings’s poetic ...”

“... gesture: The only Ghost I ever saw Was dressed in Mechlin – so – He wore no sandal on his foot – And stepped like flakes of snow – The use of ‘– so –’ shows a wish to incorporate a hand gesture into the poem and this gives it an extraordinary presence, as if her living voice is addressing us as we read. This is one extreme of puritan ...”

“... good one is worth his weight in gold.’ And here is the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock on drummer Paul Cook: ‘that steady rhythm of his was the whole backbone of the Pistols’ sound.’ Then you have the singer, the showman – who probably does the lyrics too; and the lead guitarist, who probably comes up with the music; not forgetting the ...”

“... output at a stroke. But in another way, it does remarkably little to change the sense one has of Paul Muldoon. It is a book for initiates, more of the same. Each of his previous five volumes has ended with something a little longer, a relaxing gallop after the dressage – even ‘The Year of the Sloes, for Ishi’ in New Weather (1973) was four pages ...”

“... best room in an overbooked hotel. In Poland for the papal visit in 1991, he’s so moved by John Paul II’s demeanour, conducting a six-hour open-air ceremony, that he seems to get close to re-conversion. ‘There was something about the singing, the colours and the beauty of the words which reminded me of strange, hard-won moments of pure contentment I had ...”