“... Pynchon). Fifthly and lastly, the palimpsest history of a nation and creed, in which magic may or may not be involved but seems almost irrelevant – or shall we say almost natural – compared to the preposterousness of mankind as realistically described. This we find in Terra Nostra and The Satanic Verses. Consider ...”

“... far from bringing us wisdom, the passing years make it hard for us to preserve what wisdom we may have had. The most famous account, alas, is that of the melancholic Jaques, with his lean and slipper’d pantaloon, and the ‘last scene of all’, second childishness. To which Philip Larkin has appended a later last scene: ‘... and then the only end of ...”

“... an example, for his Dimbleby Lecture, of the law’s ability to play a straight bat. A book may be lurking there, as it must in many other corners of the legal attic. Brian Simpson himself embarked on such an enterprise some years ago with the 19th-century case, known to every law student, of the Crown v. Dudley and Stephens – the captain and mate of ...”

“... stage-managed as some in recent years, but the fact that it was not patently stage-managed may have given it more credibility. No one would have, could have, or even should have, scripted John Prescott. The Conference had the sense of a real occasion, with real people engaged in a real political argument. This was the electricity which charged the key ...”

“... students and workers) with the radical Left among the rank-and-file of the Communist Party. This may pose a threat to the Party leadership: although the Young Turks who organise the Front in Moscow, such as Boris Kagarlitsky, have argued that ‘conditions are not yet ready to replace the one-party system with a multi-party one,’ it is implicit in their ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Science does not customarily pose big questions. It poses small questions.’ It may seem odd to find such a statement in a book whose main questions have to do with Mind and the Cosmos, the twin mysteries of human existence, and whose answers are based upon current scientific understanding. The statement, however, embodies an important truth, upon which the entire book rests ...”

“... in the Books of Maccabees. Jewish writers who composed scathing remarks about Greeks in general may have had in mind the political sins of Hellenistic rulers, the Seleucids chief among them. When Jews attacked idolatry they demonstrated no special concern over Greek forms of paganism. As Josephus remarked uneirenically in his apologia addressed to the Greek ...”

“... two are risks that Francophones must assess for themselves. Inside and outside Québec, a majority may come to feel that separation would clear the air and allow each of the ‘founding peoples’ to pursue their destiny unhindered. Once on its own, Québec might have to reconsider its linguistic ideals. Anglophones and allophones would be nervous about ...”

“... I was, of course, unaware that the play-let is an exquisite parody of Bergman’s Seventh Seal. I may have been a pretentious and culturally omnivorous adolescent, but it was exclusively the strength of Allen’s one-liners, and the precision of his comic timing, that fuelled my admiration. There can have been nothing more absurd to the audience of North ...”

“... and other aid can do that with cholera, as with other such scourges, even while the death toll may in this case have to be dreadfully high. With generous and intelligent aid, epidemics can be handled, and we may well hope that this one will be. The larger problem comes afterwards: so what then? Current debate and local ...”