“... Essentially, as Philip French once observed, it is ‘America rewriting and reinterpreting her own past, however honestly or dishonestly’. As is the literary history of Westerns: Henry Nash Smith’s classic Virgin Land is redolent of New Deal optimism, Robert Warshow’s much anthologised essay ‘The Westerner’ is a précis of Cold War ...”

“... Raleigh. Arundel House, the most gorgeous palace of them all, was acquired by Alethea Howard and her husband, the earl of Arundel. These patrons of the arts exposed their ‘jewells of art to publicke view’ – these ‘jewells’ being a peerless library, Greek and Roman sculptures, seventeen Raphaels and a garden designed by Inigo Jones. Denmark ...”

“... sword: mocked by his minions, he appeals to Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, who thereupon enters in majesty and introduces the instruments of modern science. The open-air production took full shape during Empson’s summer absence at the School of Letters in Bloomington, Indiana. The student producer, Peter Cheeseman (now Director of the New Victoria ...”

“... on ‘our nation’s Capitol’ (for maximum effect, the phrase needs to be intoned with baleful majesty – eyeballs big and hideously bulging). The same ugly question kept intruding: would house-wrecker Highsmith – everyone’s favourite mess-with-your-head morbid misanthrope – have relished the day’s cascading idiocy?As an embittered ...”

“... after his death in 1680 at the age of 33, the poet Rochester was the guide who would have led her ‘right in wisdom’s way’: He civilised the rude and taught the young, Made fools grow wise, such artful music hung Upon his useful, kind, instructing tongue. Rochester’s modern editors and biographers are well aware of Wharton’s elegy, but they are ...”

“... long studying how to go about it’ – to ‘give My Mistress a kiss in presenting her a Ribband for a Christmas Box’, the beginning of a slow-burning affair that went on without Wolton’s knowledge in the back rooms of roadside inns for months. Lyon itself – which Hammond chastised in his journal for the ‘extream Narrowness of the ...”

“... Confession that one has no idea why Burns did this or that, or what he thought about him or her, has seemed almost disloyal to the Immortal Memory. This is an anniversary year, marking 250 years since Robert Burns was born in the cottage his father built at Alloway, near Ayr. On 25 January, 1030 Burns Clubs with 80,000 members in 18 countries performed ...”

“... with the cry of ‘Murder!’ ringing through the playhouse, the white-faced widow shouting in her box, the silly-looking theatregoers rushing on stage: ‘a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival – the actors and actresses all there in their play-costumes and painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge ... In the midst of ...”

“... earthworm, whose excrement carried the germ. He was also famously taciturn. On the anniversary of her wedding, Mme Pasteur wrote to her daughter: ‘Your father, very busy as always, says little to me, sleeps little, and gets up at dawn – in a word, continues the life that I began with him 35 years ago today.’ One of ...”

“... a bad phrase and find a good one instead, but the beauty of Venice can’t help him do that. Its majesty just distracts. That doesn’t simply tell us that James devoted a lot of energy (maybe at times too much energy) to avoiding a ‘lame phrase’. It’s also a sort of drama about a walk around the alleys and backstreets of Venice, in which you’re ...”

“... together. As illustrated, there are six panels, showing father and two children – Mum took her two away when the marriage broke up. This neatly supports Halle’s notion that the formal family group asserts more stability than the facts of social life can support. Snapshots on the other hand allow easy regrouping. The commonest kind of picture for his ...”

“... was woven by his sister, Miriam, ‘the first of the great mothers’, and we are assured that her song was liquid, with lulla or lolla or lalla in it. This first page is faced by a reproduction of Raphael’s Moses Rescued from the Waters: big girls, or great mothers, are hauling the infant prophet from his safe cot, his secure hour. The final essay lulls ...”

“... this enthusiastically written book. Perkins is at times forced into self-parody: ‘Except for her poetry and madness, Anne Sexton (1928-74), née Harvey, lived as a suburban housewife.’ But he does his best to enliven things with biographical vignettes. The revelation that John Ashbery was a radio Quiz Kid at the age of 14 does nothing to undermine my ...”

“... with the space fictions, and it is perhaps noteworthy that Lewis’s Perelandran Lady shares her coloration with Read’s troglodytic girl.) The derivation makes no matter. What appears virtually certain is that Perelandra didn’t start with the Artist having fun with his islands and the Man then nosing in. There was a war on with atheistic ...”

“... committee to scrutinise the public spending of all government departments, Hogg managed to get her to agree that the (high-spending) Lord Chancellor’s department alone should be exempt from scrutiny: it would be sacrilegious to have MPs poking around wanting to know about the deep mysteries of the system, such as how judges were appointed. Lewis does not ...”