“... Middle-march. It is no use Gordon Haight’s denying that George Eliot meant to satirise Pattison: John Sparrow has pointed out that in that case it is odd that George Eliot, who was well acquainted with Pattison and his much younger wife, should have chosen to call the author of the Key to All Mythologies by the name of a 16th-century French scholar whose ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the Old and New Testaments. Here, as in most fields of Orientalism, it was the Germans who took the lead. Gustav Weil and Theodor Nöldeke attempted to fix the chronological order of the revelation and determine which verses were revealed to Muhammad in Mecca and which came later, after he had been driven into exile in Medina. Orientalists ...”

“... writing as an adult male about his Michigan girlhood and the path a mutated gene took through three generations before reaching him. These two books suggest an inventive writer committed to finding a new structure and voice for each story he tells. That such a writer would then publish a semi-autobiographical coming of age story, following ...”

“... a go at closing down the combination room in which the plots against him were hatched. The fellows took their master first to the college visitor (the Bishop of Ely, who was supposed to arbitrate in these kinds of dispute) and then repeatedly to court. His more colourful biographers dwell on other scandals too: when a gun was discharged into the study of the ...”

“... friend: ‘The spirits of my African ancestors were there. I could feel them and they really took hold of me . . . I could see them moving about . . . Yes, it was deep, man . . . I just let the spirits take hold of me . . . But you know, I expect people to respect me. What I do demands so much of me that they must respect what I do.’ It turns ...”

“... resemblance to Monica Lewinsky). They shot his three bodyguards dead, set fire to his home and took him to a safe house from which he was allowed to phone a TV station in order to call on Maliki not to attack the Mehdi Army. Why did the Iraqi army fail? Training a new army has been at the centre of British and American policy for the last four years. At ...”

“... invited him back to their hotel for ‘a little private party’. Beg declined, so the players took him anyway – according to Beg – dislocating one of his arms in the process. At the hotel, Beg recounted later, the cricketers doused him with water and forced him to swig some whisky. Not until a team of Pakistani cricketers heard about Beg’s ordeal ...”

“... enter Gaza to 34 – flour but not yeast, sugar but not coffee or tea. (‘Pasta,’ a querulous John Kerry asked senior Israeli officials after visiting Gaza, ‘what’s wrong with pasta?’) The shortages were biting, particularly after Israel destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes, schools and government buildings in its 22-day campaign last ...”

“... via the Egyptian capital of Alexandria and Syrian Antioch. Back in her home town she took up with another rising political star, Justinian, the nephew and adopted son of the then emperor, Justin. This time the pair did marry, but only after Justin’s disapproving wife had died and the elderly emperor was persuaded to change the law to allow ...”

“... too passive and nationalistic. His frenetic, channel-surfing 28-minute collage of digital imagery took in Japanese Pepsi commercials and experimental theatre. The New York Times obituary of Paik, who died in January 2006, described him as a ‘prophet’ of video art; his predictions of a mass media age seem extraordinary today. In a 1974 essay based on his ...”

“... Wortley Montagu’s letters are an early example of a rare source: first-hand information. She took the line – which was to become common among travellers – that harem days were more humdrum, the emotions more ordinary and the life more open and pleasant than Europeans imagined. But the harems of fact (and even Lady Mary’s account was not untouched ...”

“... gives a voice to a group who are not generally believed to have (or to be entitled to) one, while John Conroy’s account is that of a sympathetic outsider nervously learning the codes and concerns of a small Catholic community at the eye of the storm. At the academic level, the heightened interest in Irish history in England has found a focus in the dynamic ...”

“... began to follow the first GCSE courses under the National Curriculum, the Education Minister John Patten infuriated the teaching profession by announcing an immediate review of the Statutory Order for English. No sooner had the review been announced than Mr Patten and his fellow ministers did their best to pre-empt its outcome. They let it be known that ...”

“... the most written about poet of our time – over three thousand items, Pierre Joris reckons. John Felstiner’s book is of inestimable value to anyone wanting to read Celan with understanding. It provides a sort of triple deal, giving a rudimentary narrative of the life, and combining this with translations and brilliant readings of maybe four or five ...”