“... of the Senses: that the sexual culture of the mid and late 19th century in the West, while it may not have been what we supposed, was nevertheless distinctive. It seems right to call this view the assumption on which Education of the Senses is based, if only because of the book’s design. It runs from ‘Victoria to Freud’, and is intended as the first ...”

“... order to demonstrate that I have not inadvertently farted. The secretary looks up inquiringly. She may just be thinking I am uncomfortable. She may, on the other hand, be thinking I have farted, and not once but three times. I am attending a funeral. It is crowded with mourners, many of them friends and acquaintances. I do ...”

“... de foie to the sound of trumpets’ – is investigated by Alan Bell with the finding that it may have referred to someone else: but it is hard to detach it from the miser’s greedy son. His appearance was described by one woman in words that would not have disgraced a sally of his own: ‘a mouth like an oyster, and three double chins. I did not hear ...”

“... of something that cannot be justified in words any more than can the rules of grammar which may be responsible for the appearance of tame conformism in so much of the literature on the subject quoted by the authors. One is reminded of the splendid chapter in Samuel Butler’s Erewhon describing the ‘Musical Banks’ which demand and exact ...”

“... here the bombing is terrible. I hope the same thing never comes to Glasgow. Tell Annie, Jeannie, May, Katie and them all I was asking for them. I hope you and the kids are keeping well I will be here for some time yet. I will draw to a close sending you and the kids my best love. Michael A thin strip of darkness, the U-boat U.99, commanded by the ...”

“... adaptation of Little Women, in which Jo March rejects romance to become the writer Louisa May Alcott. But Batuman is just teasing us. That isn’t the story here. Selin’s confidence in being able to author herself is worryingly akin to her fellow students’ boundless, all-American faith in their own perfectibility. It’s what a Harvard education ...”

“... zookeeper. Aspinall’s notoriously lethal zoos have done their bit for the scheme, but the latter may not be achievable within liberalism as we know it. This turn, unlikely as it is to land Gray a job with the Bush Administration, at least rebuts the charge of time-serving. In any case, he has been sufficiently wayward, and rude about other theorists, to ...”

“... of people claiming to be in love after decades of marriage resemble those of new lovers. Romance may authentically survive: ‘That’s what the brain scans are telling us. People can’t fake that.’ ‘Brain-Scan Lie Detectors Coming in Near Future,’ runs a news story, cued by a San Diego company press release. Will they become part of legal routine, or ...”

“... published work seems to me somewhat like deserting one’s colours,’ he told Lord Lytton. ‘One may or may not repent having enlisted, but to lay down one’s arms, except under compulsion, remains intolerable.’ Politically, Swinburne saw himself as an apostle of liberalism, supporting ...”

“... a chilly forehead and a warm thigh, or St Simeon, being written by the tip of his stylus? You may prefer Marguerite Porete, burning alive with her book, or the rich black intersection of St John of the Cross or the pyroclastic whisper of Anonymous, Unknown Author. Or something a little closer to home – Jeannie, for instance, the family friend whom my ...”

“... next moves. Teenagers riot and loot in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. Theresa May invites Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street to do a deal. ‘Take back control.’ Strivers v. shirkers. The Red Wall. Eat Out to Help Out. ‘In the UK illegally? GO HOME OR FACE ARREST.’ The Bank of England prints another hundred billion pounds. Nick ...”

“... to express to the life what ecstasies and transports of the soul are, when it is so sav’d, as I may say, out of the very grave; and I do not wonder now at that custom, viz. That when a malefactor who has the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turn’d off, and has a reprieve brought to him: I say, I do not wonder that they bring a ...”

“... on, which enables him to match and make his vision of the world. He was 17½ when the war ended in May 1945. The compulsion exerted on him comes, not from the events of the past, but from a recollection of those events. In Grass’s early novels it is converted into a prose which turns out to be the only major source of liberation from an unmanageable literary ...”

“... to the tenets of Islam, they announced, were largely immune from the debt crisis. Devout Muslims may lend and borrow under certain conditions; they can even buy and sell debt in the form of ‘Islamic’ bonds, but most other kinds of debt trading are frowned on. Al Rajhi Bank, based in Saudi Arabia, and the Kuwait Finance House posted impressive profits in ...”

“... the Irish are pleased to call the confluence of two little streams, pompously or poetically as you may please to decide, I think more has been made of it than either the waters or their meeting deserve.’ This is the English travel writer John Barrow writing of the Vale of Avoca in 1835. Like him, I find it hard to decide on the register of the phrase, so ...”