“... could break out in other friendly states. Asked whether he expected similar unrest in Jordan, John Kerry, who was admirably forthright in calling for Mubarak to stand down, dismissed the idea: ‘King Abdullah of Jordan is extraordinarily intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive, in touch with his people. The monarchy there is very well respected, even ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... omphalos, omphalos.The clarity of this omphaloskeptic vision is, I would suggest, one of the major reasons for Seamus Heaney’s emergence as the most internationally-acclaimed Irish poet since W.B. Yeats. For he has demonstrated once again that there are more ways of making it new than are known to those critics of poetry who simply follow current ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Vasari coined the name ‘Fra Angelico’ a hundred years later. In 1982, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II, which is why Italian audiences now call him Beato Angelico – not just angelic, but blessed.With more than 140 pieces on display, the exhibition has enough material to chart the full arc of his career. The works are arranged broadly ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... agitation for the advancement of women. She organised schemes for educational reform, and was the major benefactor of Girton College. ‘Education seems to me the only remedy,’ she once remarked. She was also a prolific and rather successful painter, and founded the Society of Female Artists. There was hardly a scheme for the furtherance of women’s ...”

“... the wealthy and unscrupulous entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman imports and rebuilds all the major English tourist attractions on the Isle of Wight and opens up the island as a theme-park offering ‘Quality Leisure’ to wealthy American and Japanese tourists. Sir Jack, in the process, ends up rewriting English history, reproducing a new England in a ...”

“... odd fish?’ Severn also asked, and Crane’s book is an attempt to answer that question. Edward John Trelawny was born in 1792 and died in 1881. In his later years he was a legendary figure, farouche and craggy, a solitary survivor from an epoch which already seemed fabulously remote: here, living on deep into the later Victorian age was a man who had once ...”

“... Russians in Prague, Berlin and Paris. Almost overnight, Marina Tsvetaeva was recognised as a major literary figure. A poet of immense originality and versatility, in her mature work Tsvetaeva expanded the scope of Russian prosody and metrics. She had at her command an amazing range of poetic voices, dictions and styles which she used in her ...”