“... of Crocodiles (1934) were recognised immediately: it received admiring notices and was awarded a major prize. Three years later it was followed by Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, which was published with Schulz’s illustrations to the text. These are reproduced in the present compendious volume, as are all his extant drawings and etchings. The ...”

“... structural features of language and thought. And he also catalogues the various ways in which the major characters and ideas of the Antigone have been interpreted. The final third of the book attempts, by means of a partial and discursive commentary, to deepen our understanding of Sophocles’s text. Thus in Antigones a subtle, sensitive and uniquely learned ...”

“... which was about to become a Soviet base – the so-called People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. Major-General Strawson concludes his study and brings it up to date with brief chapters on the part played by the SAS in the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London and in the Falklands fighting. He prudently writes little about the SAS in Northern Ireland. What ...”

“... strife under Vichy and the Nazi occupation, have come from transatlantic scholars such as John C. Cairns, Philip Bankwitz, Telford Taylor and Robert O. Paxton. Eleanor M. Gates might modestly disclaim inclusion in such distinguished company. But she has produced a splendid book which is both instructive and moving. She is not much interested in the ...”

“... in the history of modern engineering. They set new standards of accuracy, and prompted a major improvement in machine-tool design. But, given that the utmost regularity and uniformity in scores of components was essential for the Engines, need they have been such physically grandiose objects? The Analytical Engine, at one stage of its ...”

“... which our experience and culture most directly derive’, and to those subjects that exerted their major influence before 1914 rather than after. This, she admitted, meant excluding Eastern Europe,3 as well as figures such as Freud and Einstein who achieved renown after the war. Oppressed by ‘the faces and voices’ she had been compelled to leave ...”

“... normal rates of productivity. Lambert’s investigations in Victorian literature are like the work John Sutherland has issued over the last decade on the publishing history of Victorian fiction: a fresh, vigorous and definite line of attack, which couldn’t possibly occupy the energies of a whole academic establishment. That establishment does not look very ...”

“... George Brown’s incomes policy and National Plan and, later, the Social Contract were claimed as major socio-economic innovations – British firsts. The Manchu Empire had suffered similar ethnocentric delusions and had published maps which showed it to lie at the centre of the world; the British, for their part, did not seem wholly to grasp that in other ...”

“... be forgiven for asking if the fame didn’t far outstrip the promise, and if his was rather less a major talent dissipated than a minor gift cleverly marketed. Taking the generous view of Capote’s talent and importance after the publication of his first book, Cyril Connolly predicted his martyrdom at the hands of a frightened and envious America. Capote’s ...”

“... Fleet Street proprietors who helped make Harold Wilson electable in the mid-Sixties. If Mr Major doesn’t watch out, their successors could easily do the same for John Smith in the mid Nineties. Why, the proprietor of the Sun and the News of the World may already be rummaging through his attic even as I write, in ...”

“... organisation with anti-semitism and anti-Catholicism. Half a century later, Cobb County elected a John Bircher to Congress five times; it is now represented by Newt Gingrich. Although a 1967 Supreme Court decision finally overturned the Georgia state law that barred racial intermarriage, in 1986 the Supreme Court upheld a Georgia statute outlawing consensual ...”

“... American original who came of age in the Fifties, Paley has concentrated on short fiction, and her major work is assembled in a single, not extraordinarily hefty volume. (She began writing as a poet, but her first volume of poetry, Begin Again, wasn’t published until 1993. Her miscellaneous essays, articles, reports and public addresses have just been ...”

“... written records of disciples. From a purely literary point of view, Plato, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were more talented and conscientious than the scribes who compiled Confucius’ wisdom. Even if more people have read the Analects than Plato’s Dialogues or the Gospels, and even if its message has influenced more people than they have, it is inferior to ...”

“... grateful. In 1921, though, Pound’s main concern was Eliot. By freeing Eliot, he would strike a major blow for European culture. To this end, he began firing off belligerent circulars. The line was: put your money where your mouth is. ‘Must restart civilisation: people who say they care, DON’t care unless they care to the extent of £5 in the spring and ...”

“... Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950) is the most recognisable, though I prefer Myrtle Gordon in John Cassavetes’s Opening Night (1977). Myrtle, played by Gena Rowlands, is in the twilight of her career and bent on sabotaging the play for which she’s currently rehearsing. She drinks too much; is haunted by a woman with a striking resemblance to her ...”