“... talked what he called the ‘true Ciceronian’ (i.e. always ending every period with a verb), may have been the death of Bach and certainly did nothing for Handel. Still, he clearly removed a lot of cataracts; he had a steady hand and a sharp knife; there is something horrid in his own account of how he cured a noble lady of a drooping eyelid, she calling ...”

“... by Callaghan and his own actions, but in the wider Labour movement. He calls Part Six of the book (May 1979-May 1980) ‘Beginning Again’, and it was on the strength of that new beginning, and of the ‘youngsters’ (of whom more later), that he was to prepare his campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour ...”

“... political factions are more concerned with orchestrating the massive funeral procession, which may or may not help to undermine the military dictatorship. Most of these characters have a strong sense of the potential historical significance of their actions, but Donoso gently deflates their pretensions. Whatever their ...”

“... records a younger brother, Jose, then aged one, never, it seems, mentioned by the painter. Jose may be a clerical error, but more probably he lived only for a short time. In any case, no male sibling survived as a rival for the love of Picasso’s mother, on whose support he could always count. Little is known about her, and Richardson, while acknowledging ...”

“... than Sweeney could ever have managed. Armitage has a lot of fun with Robinson: the reader may not quite share his enthusiasm, or see this persona’s significance, though there are memorable moments, particularly in ‘Mr Robinson’s Holiday’, where his meanness has a number of comic consequences and where he is promoted, as he walks on a moonlit ...”

“... by modern standards, is the equivalent of Edward Jenner’s first trials of vaccination. In May 1796, he took material from a pustule on the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a dairymaid who had cowpox, and placed that fluid on incisions made in the arm of James Phipps. A later attempt to inoculate Phipps with smallpox failed. The comparison with HIV not as ...”

“... Sticks and stones may break my bones ...’ Like most children, I learned this piece of wisdom with tears streaming down my face, hurt to the quick by the taunts of my playmates. At the time, it seemed a very foolish statement. What was this splitting of hurt into ‘real’ injury and ‘unreal’ feeling? I certainly felt hurt ...”

“... anticipate matters by murdering all his male offspring but one. Of course ‘blood tanistry’ may be due to no more than a squeamish copy editor, but even minor errors in a book which has to be convincing in its handling of a large range of disparate information, or else succumb to suspicion as to its accuracy at every point, at once put the reader on the ...”

“... provided it doesn’t interfere with the equivalent right of others. In particular, none of us may impose our own, contested conception of well-being as the basis for the political order – and that applies even to a conception like Raz’s value pluralism. The difference between Rawls’s view, based on the requirement to treat people as equals, and ...”

“... editor of The New Select Committees, points out in his introduction, ‘the purpose of a report may be to influence a government department, or another public sector agency, or to provide information for MPs to use in a forthcoming Parliamentary debate.’ But how then are the committees to be judged? Is the right yardstick their impact on Government ...”

“... been more misleading than this one. Nor is it just a question of writers like Proust and Mann, who may be said to belong to the last flowering of the 19th century. In the 1980s the tradition of setting a certain kind of novel ‘one generation back’ in time remains as vital as ever. We are accustomed to the paradox that most people’s notions of the texture ...”

“... granted even by those who regret that he is so tolerant of them as works of art. ‘Theatrical’ may suggest condescending praise but Rosenblum takes Lady Jane Grey very seriously. This will shock some people, but they will be relieved that Rosenblum does not recommend that we like everything. He shakes no established reputation – a pity to my mind since ...”

“... the wealth of information, I cannot reconcile Jones’s picture with my reading of Chaucer. Now it may be, as Jones would certainly argue, that this is just prejudice on my part: this is how I have always seen the Knight, and I’m unwilling to change my mind. Tone is always a difficult thing to discuss and an impossible thing to prove. Yet it is not wholly ...”

“... individually rational can be jointly damaging, and also that when the parties know that fact, they may still have good reason to follow them. These issues, and many others of the same kind which he discusses, have a good deal to do with politics. Parfit makes it clear that they do, but he does not for the most part discuss them as though they did. The ...”

“... memory that a policeman never loses – no matter how senior he becomes’. Meanwhile the reader may be somewhat puzzled to know, first, how Mountbatten came to believe that the post of Commissioner of police for London was in his personal gift, and secondly why, if so, he decided to bestow it on a man whom he had never previously met. In fact, McNee did not ...”