“... or (as the editors of Modernity and Identity prefer) ‘low-modernity’. However reluctant one may be to see it go, modernity appears to be slipping away, and the need to discover its identity seems correspondingly urgent. If, for the sake of clarity, we take the modern era to include at least the period from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th ...”

“... original (moreover, I suspect that, in addition to wax and wood, textile was employed). The gold may explain the survival: it transformed a painter’s model into a work of miniature sculpture attractive to the collector. After his return to Florence in 1510 Sansovino was commissioned to carve a half life-size marble Bacchus for a garden. He created the ...”

“... To worry in this way, you need to take seriously the question whether our descriptions of Reality may not be all too human, all too influenced by our hopes and fears. It helps to anguish about whether Reality (and therefore Truth as well) may not stand aloof, beyond the reach of the sentences in which we formulate our ...”

“... was at art college. At the end of that year, Lily took a job with William Morris’s daughter, May, who taught her to embroider the complicated Morris patterns and to transfer designs to fabric. She was friendly with May, and often ate with the family, but she was not encouraged to make her own designs, and quickly found ...”

“... Lipovetsky’s book is the complete absence of illustrations, even diagrams and graphs. This may be the first book about fashion without pictures – even Roland Barthes used diagrams. Of course, Balzac’s ‘Physiologie de la toilette’ didn’t have any, but that originally appeared in a magazine, and journal publication can preclude pictures even ...”

“... family, Denis Mack Smith has turned back to a figure who fully engages his sympathies, and some may miss the darkly satirical tone of those earlier essays in denunciation. Mazzini is a work of passionate advocacy, which aims both to remind us of its subject’s enormous importance on the European as well as the Italian stage, and to convince us that on the ...”

“... under the age of 50, the odds are that you’re not, and if you’re under the age of 30, you may well be bloody furious. Britain has become a polity plagued by a fear of its own rejuvenation. How has this situation come about? It’s tempting to view the division in wholly ‘cultural’ terms – a clash of values. This story is well ...”

“... for not giving any – as well as being admirably genial. After all, says Aldiss, the definition may be wrong, but it doesn’t matter: ‘we can modify it as we go along.’ The definition is as follows: ‘Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of ...”

“... euphemism, found in the Spectator, this time referring to the former Kate Middleton: ‘She may still have her V-plates intact … the age-old requisite for future queen consorts.’ The equation of young women and toilets is gross and the far side of misogyny but it’s only to be expected in a tampophiliac family with a fondness for ...”

“... despite his mother’s clamorous love for him, sounds like he was an orphan in his own family – may be a reason for having these kinds of thought, but that only makes them more pertinent. How, White asks, could one be proud of one’s disloyalty? And the answer might be, one could be proud of it if it was part of one’s project to find the impersonal ...”

“... funding and operations of Arab-based terrorist groups. As for Europe, British military support may be unconditional, but most European countries – Russia among them – are likely to restrict their help to intelligence and policing. Apart from the fact that most European armies are useless when it comes to serious warfare, they are already showing great ...”

“... quantity of writing that Russell produced in his lifetime almost defies belief.’ Russell may have experienced himself as a ghost: but he was an unusually articulate one. Monk was even more struck by what he called, in a characteristically prudent phrase, Russell’s ‘detailed self-absorption’. All this, one might think, would be something of a ...”

“... he demonstrated that Andrea del Castagno was buried in August 1457, while Domenico lived on until May 1461. Andrea was a man of strange powers, but murdering Domenico when he had himself been dead for nearly four years was beyond them. This is generally taken as one of Vasari’s most egregious blunders, a glaring instance of his unreliability as a ...”

“... and no one got hurt. The press described him as more Austin Powers than James Bond, and even that may have been too much of a compliment. You may find the story quite farcical, and in a sense it is, but the farce had a sinister side to it. Take the recent case of Mark Kennedy. Kennedy, a police officer, infiltrated the ...”

“... its outline distinct or was it so brilliant that outline could not be perceived. In other words I may say did it look like the moon definite in form or like a large bright fire at a distance quite indefinite except as a centre of light? Did it distinctly cut ducks & drakes on the surface of the lake? Were its bounds perceived & traced by the eye? Were any ...”