“... his peers. In recent years Bossy has undergone a process of reversion, however. In our dreams we may encounter, disturbingly, old flames of many years ago, or other reminders of the persons we once were. Bossy’s original work, back in the 1950s, was on the French connection: the cross-Channel traffic not in drugs but in Catholicism, and it is to that first ...”

“... and in some of his friendships, such as that with Beaverbrook. Some of his misjudgments in office may have been disastrous, though both books are charitable to him over the Dardanelles fiasco (‘it could have worked’). Many of his Parliamentary interventions were terribly botched. Harold Nicolson thought he could tell when he was about to blow it: I knew ...”

“... nothing he does in this area will ever bear fruit and therefore his work can be safely ignored. It may be that a possible solution of one of the most important problems in mathematics is never investigated because no one likes the solution’s author.De Branges’s paper was slipped onto the internet without a fuss. Had he been any other mathematician, there ...”

“... To say that nothing preceded it is to claim that God didn’t have to bring it about, indeed may long since have bitterly regretted doing so. From a theological viewpoint, the universe could very easily never have happened. God created it out of love, not need. Since he is complete in himself, the dismal truth is that he does not need us at all, any more ...”

“... his death in 1963, he sent a message from his hospital bed to the Poetry Society of America: ‘I may wobble when I’m sitting up but I never waver.’ These declarations of independence sound reassuringly like the Frost of the anthologies, the author of ‘guidebooks for the spirit of individualism’, as Robert Faggen puts it, attracted to empty woods and ...”

“... mind that the Notebooks were, after all, no more than notes for future elaboration.) Be that as it may, it is in the context of the turbulent 1970s – ‘a time when there had recently been the largest mass strike in history in France, the overthrow of a government by workers in Britain, continuous outbreaks of revolt in Italy, the defeat of the United States ...”

“... Economic Review in 2014, cheerfully conclude: ‘Decision-making ability, unlike preferences, may be justifiably manipulated.’ Just give the poor a bit of a nudge, and they’ll shape up.That was then. And as we now know, the libertarian paternalism of the Cameron and Obama governments gave us Brexit and Trump instead. As William Davies observes in ...”

“... an enthusiastic trade warrior who occasionally indulges in anti-war rhetoric. His anti-empire talk may be as insincere as the ‘foreign policy for the middle class’ of Biden’s patrician national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Both nod to sentiments they can’t comprehend. After all, an anti-war position would imply less power, or less use of ...”

“... went abstract-dry. The two should come together again – in the novel. Why in the novel? ‘You may know a truth but if it’s at all complicated you have to be an artist not to utter it as a lie,’ says one of Iris Murdoch’s characters in An Accidental Man who is explaining why he has abandoned philosophy. It is always dangerous to impute a ...”

“... will produce a result for the Liberal Democrats much like that for the Alliance in 1987. They may do rather better in the seats where they were second last time and rather worse where Labour is clearly the challenger to the sitting Tory Member. Who knows, twenty or more Liberal Democrat MPs might yet hold the balance of power in a hung Parliament. The ...”

“... religious plenitude in which every space was covered with ‘gay outward things’. But the critic may well ask whether, any more than Stow, she has avoided looking at this lost world through rose-tinted spectacles. How sure can we be that the pre-Reformation city enjoyed unity in religion? If it did, in any significant measure, this was a unity secured ...”

“... mind. So effective a freedom fighter was he, at least on one front, that his message and his books may now seem not much more than literary curiosities. He settled down in his own lifetime to being a well-known brand of licensed English eccentric, rearranging evolution and Shakespeare’s sonnets, proving that the author of the Odyssey was a woman, crossing ...”

“... our view,’ Eberts continues, ‘it was like Gone with the Wind.’ Only English. Some may feel the massacre at Amritsar was gratuitous violence, but that was English too. The Mission (one Oscar), on the other hand, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but failed to pull in audiences. Failed to pull in large enough audiences, that is, in proportion to ...”

“... fretting, singing and dancing! Wise Children will give pleasure to thousands of readers, and it may even have the added merit of conveying without tears a hard-fought slice of the National Curriculum. Angela Carter made her name with a series of novels set in a generic Wonderland; now she has moved to Theatreland. Her fantasy worlds range from the dystopian ...”

“... such an audience without being recognised, except perhaps as a character from The Darling Buds of May). ‘Like many others, I believe, unfashionable though it may be, in original sin. And there’s no shortage of that. But, as a Tory, I also believe, in every fibre of my being, in original virtue.’ Patten of course is a ...”