“... self-effacing. If the translator blocks our view of the original, he exceeds his brief. The great masters of literary translation of the past did just that, of course: Urquhart, Florio, Burton, FitzGerald set themselves up to be conspicuous intermediaries and not mere transparencies. The languid but superior FitzGerald saw no virtue in sticking too closely to ...”

“... to situations which remain, where fiction is concerned, essentially modest. But both novelists are masters of the trade, and nothing shows this more than their handling of plot. Pym’s Academic Question has a proper triviality, an exact lightness of touch, which keeps up the reader’s curiosity without his noticing there is any plot at all. Brookner’s air ...”

“... in art and his influence on art history; the representation of historical events, of the old masters and of sad clowns in 19th-century painting; Doré’s images of London; and the 19th-century Turkish collector Khalil Bey. It ends with an obituary of Benedict Nicolson. With the exception of the last essays I have discussed, there is nothing here that I ...”

“... New Labour administration. The law is the servant, they believed, of our duly elected political masters. It is what they say it is and what they want it to be. This view inverts a central tenet of the ideal known as ‘the rule of law’. Under the rule of law, as Plato put it, ‘law is the master of the government and the government is its slave.’ Where ...”

“... off far better than the single excursion beyond letters. In this batch it is the excellence of John Barrell’s Poetry, Language and Politics which stands out, providing some compensatory cover for the shortcomings of its companion volumes. Barrell’s fine study of language and power in English poetry takes issue with the enduring assumptions of ...”

“... worked to free black slaves in England who had been brought back from the Caribbean by their masters. These efforts culminated in the Somerset decision of 1772, a legal circumlocution which may not actually have ended slavery but which persuaded a good many people – planters included – that it had done. During the Revolution itself, the loyal British ...”

“... of the Suez Canal. The possibility of military operations by the former imperialist masters of the region was the object alike of Egyptian propaganda and American concern. Nor did it take much imagination to foresee that Israel might characteristically conclude that aggression was the best form of self-defence. This opened up the possibility of ...”

“... Before it is discredited irretrievably, it should be said that Barlett, unlike our political masters, uses it in ways that raise it to a high plane of creative effect. Many of the problems he deals with would tie lesser scholars and their suffering readers into the most Gordian of conceptual knots. One cannot imagine Bartlett ever failing to be ...”

“... got to it late. After the annals of sexual prowess, the annals of sexual infirmity. After Kinsey, Masters and Johnson – ‘it was around the clitoris that they made major discoveries.’ Sex is a problem because it is no longer supposed to be a problem. ‘Throughout history men have boasted of their conquests, and in liberated ages, women too,’ writes ...”

“... always took around with him. (At one point he could eat only Bengers baby foods.) His portrait by John Singer Sargent, which adorns the cover of this volume, makes him look, in the view of Sargent’s biographer, like ‘a business executive’. He attracted neither the adoration nor the hatred that was directed at the more charismatic Curzon and ...”

“... plays do survive – Thomas Drue’s The Duchess of Suffolk, Davenport’s King John and Matilda, Arthur Wilson’s The Swisser, or Glapthorne’s Albertus Wallerstein – and others preserve a sketchy existence through the records of censorship and prosecution. Massinger causes Miss Heinemann some difficulty. She (rightly) contrasts the ...”

“... of fortune flourished,’ says the cover flap of Frances Stonor Saunders’s biography of Sir John Hawkwood (c.1320-94), one-time leader of the White Company made famous by Conan Doyle’s historical novels. The 14th century was indeed an age of opportunity for military adventurers, and for mercenary soldiers in particular. Independent companies, led by ...”

“... them. ‘The monastery of Evesham was suppressed by King Henry VIII … at evensong time,’ John of Alcester recorded, ‘the convent being in the choir at this verse Deposuit potentes, and would not suffer them to make an end.’ Four years into the dissolution, there were few wealthy abbeys left to seize; the very last was Waltham Abbey, on 23 March ...”

“... many of Thomas’s posthumous miracles involved the cure of hunting hawks and their knightly masters. If Thomas belonged to two worlds, he satisfied neither in his lifetime. This biography does not so much reveal a great conflict of principle between church and state as display the confusion and bafflement felt by Thomas’s contemporaries over his ...”

“... much for undercover work!’ he reflected ruefully. Nor was his faith in his intelligence masters enhanced when the ferry pulled into Belfast. There was no one to meet him! In the dock and in the car park he was harassed by a slovenly tramp. When the tramp barred his way, Holroyd rushed into the Departure Lounge, borrowed a pistol from a fellow ...”