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“... don’t know exactly why, it probably alludes to the drama’s ritual, even sacrificial origins. Robert Cowan remarks that tragedy ‘was born under tyranny but flowered under democracy’, though Mitchell Greenberg notes that in the 17th century tragic theatre enjoyed a golden period in an age of political absolutism. It is also worth asking why the decline ...”

“... defiant statements (Byrd used his to proclaim his allegiance to the pope). McCarthy attributes his self-assurance in both the highest and the lowest musical styles of the day to the difficult trajectory of his career. ‘He did not merely survive constant change: it made him even more capable.’The scant biographical detail means that it is difficult to ...”

“... European empires, while many dreamed of an extra-European empire of their own. In 1684, Robert Barclay, an Aberdeenshire Quaker, founded his own settlement in east New Jersey; and in 1698, perhaps a quarter of Scotland’s liquid capital was expended on the Darien Scheme, an abortive attempt to establish a colony in Central America. After this ...”

“... corporations in Nitassinan as ‘colonialism’. In the early days of colonialism, as part of the self-justifying process of presenting subjugated races as inferior, eager scientists, intrepid explorers, shameless promoters and greedy businessmen – often one and the same person – found common interest in coercing or bribing ‘exotic’ natives to be put ...”

“... day when, as a boy fighting in the Russian Civil War, he killed (or thought he killed) a man in self-defence. The man was blond and handsome, on a beautiful white horse; the narrator was tired and ugly, riding a black nag. (Gazdanov’s protagonists often shared his characteristics. His fellow émigré Vasily Yanovsky described him as ‘a stocky fellow ...”

“... undemanding relationship with her erstwhile husband than of the ungovernable passion she felt for Robert. He rather relied on this passion keeping their marriage on more placid and companionable lines. When Tory worries about her son at boarding school, Bertram suggests they call the matron. ‘That “we” took a great burden from her. For so long she had ...”

“... Other club members preferred less gruesome explanations for the playwright’s brilliance. Robert Folkestone Williams, later to write a trilogy of biographical novels about Shakespeare – Shakespeare and His Friends, The Youth of Shakespeare and The Secret Passion – reverts to a less elaborate version of the Ovid-goes-to-Stratford manner in ‘A ...”

“... some curators in Europe. At the beginning of the practice known as ‘institutional critique’, Robert Smithson insisted that the artist must understand the apparatus he or she is ‘threaded through’ in order to challenge, if not to change, its operations. Today many artists are only too happy to be so threaded, and many curators only too eager to do the ...”

“... Robert Frost’s crack about free verse – that it’s tennis without a net – might be modified to describe Georges Perec’s novels: they’re tennis with nets everywhere. His whodunnit La Disparition (1969), a lipogram, was written without the use of the letter e (it was translated into e-less English as A Void by Gilbert Adair in 1994 ...”

“... age of 32. All this might hint at hyper-intensity or emotional desperation. Yet the lifestyles and self-representations of Suckling and his friends have to be viewed warily. We are not yet in the world of Rochester, who would have Puritan rule to react against and a merry monarch to indulge him. There were common sense and realism in Suckling, who mocked the ...”

“... of the uncanny was to haunt a violent century in which emphatic distinctions would be made between self and others, friends and enemies, compatriots and strangers. When the familiar and the unfamiliar can’t be clearly distinguished, thrones and altars start to tremble. Who is my friend and who is not? What are the duties or practical implications of ...”

“... The problem​ with being a dedicated social trouble-maker who has not self-destructed is that, as the decades roll by, the society you wish to irritate gets used to you and even begins to regard you with a certain affection. Eventually, you become a beloved puppy that is always forgiven for soiling the carpet. No matter what taboos you kick out at, people just smile and shake their head ...”

“... and reasoned reflection, rather than only by financial incentives (acting merely as ‘self-interested rational actors’): ‘One by one, then, the signposts to sustainability are being erected; and I regard ecological citizenship as a key addition to the collection.’This sense of ecological responsibility is part of a new trend which straddles ...”

“... all. The work is not without charm or felicities of style, but it is pretty thin stuff: precious, self-indulgent fluff. It is also true, however, that had Brautigan been an Easterner, an Ivy League graduate, a habitué of upper Manhattan literary soirées, he might well have been allowed a gentler landing. But he was not any of those things: he was a ...”

“... on Alcatraz. San Francisco prides itself on being a liberal place to live, but the urge to self-destruction saw the bridge and recognised destiny. There are still disputes about whether to build a ‘suicide barrier’ on the bridge or whether to leave the decision to the person who spends an hour gazing at the water below. That’s where the drama ...”