“... and the finish. So much so, indeed, that when discussing the behaviour of atoms and electrons we may doubt whether these entities are more than convenient fictions introduced as part of the paraphernalia of the mathematical theory. But there is worse to come: it is easy to devise experiments involving two or more observers, and to find that their combined ...”

“... A city without a past is a city without a future. It may exist as a set of buildings, but not as a culture. But not every city with a past has a future, except as a set of buildings. The springs of innovation may dry up, the crossroads that first gave it its importance may no longer lead anywhere ...”

“... have news from the animals and how it’s meant to affect us. To put it another way, sociobiology may now take on a modish garb: homosexual lizards are suddenly ‘discovered’ in the South-Western United States; some females in nature turn out to be, rather briefly, nice to each other. Do we care? This is of course unfair, since both writers might argue ...”

“... about them. A cross-section of the bole of a Richardson willow no thicker than your finger may reveal 200 annual growth rings beneath the magnifying-glass. Much of the tundra, of course, appears to be treeless when, in many places, it is actually covered with trees – a thick matting of short, ancient willows and birches. You realise suddenly that you ...”

“... influenced the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, but his major literary legacy may have been an unwitting contribution to the prose style of Gertrude Stein. James’s masterpiece, which took him 12 years to write, was the two-volume Principles of Psychology. Published in 1890, it is still worth reading and is perhaps read by more ...”

“... feeling its shape from the outside. Some information can be obtained, and certain gross functions may be localised, but we really must get inside the brain if we are to make much progress, and identify the details of its circuitry. Unlucky Gall’s materialistic approach led to his prohibition from teaching in Austria, his persecution by the Church, and his ...”

“... for breaking the rules he contrives still more firmly to despise the French for keeping them’ may sound a little bald, but a sarcasm about a sarcasm doesn’t comfortably cancel out into wholehearted approval. If Pope welcomed Boileau’s authority, and even ‘the Critick’s Law’ it partly rested on, he was more insistent and more eloquent than most ...”

“... great metaphysical systems of German Idealism. The challenge consists in the suggestion that we may somehow be locked in by our own limitations, unable to crash through to something with which it is very important to get in touch. In the Middle Ages, it was God who seemed out of reach. Human finitude might, or might not, manage to bridge the gap between ...”

“... up the Latin picaresque tradition. The new English audience was, what the original Greek audience may have been, a comfortable urban middle class, prosperous enough to believe in virtue and true love, towny enough to view the country only as a nursery of picturesque innocence or a theatre of primitive brigandage. The relationship was indeed recognised: but it ...”

“... improvement in readability is enormous, for, through Henry, that inspired comic creation, Berryman may be said to have found his own distinctive voice. Berryman’s early work is strenuous in manner, full of devices learned from his poetic forebears: Milton’s substitution of adjectives for adverbs, for example, or Hopkins’s expressive breaking and ...”

“... they change every now and again, shows a strange relation to facts. On balance, Hill’s book may well be quite a good introduction for social workers to systems of social security, personal social services, the health service, education, employment services and housing: but oh, is it one-dimensional and uninspiring, even where it quotes the unorthodox ...”

“... well-chronicled activities in France and historically decisive foundation of Normandy. All four may be described as coffee-table books, and all four sustain their publishers’ well-earned reputation for superb illustrations – though a symbolic reductio ad absurdum of modern techniques is the obliteration of much of David Wilson’s foreword to The Viking ...”

“... Gratiano but the virtuous Antonio, treat him. Antonio agrees that when their bargain is over he may well resume his practice of spitting on Shylock’s Jewish gaberdine. The key passage here is ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, etc?’ If one were to take the play at the simplest, most schematic ...”

“... and sanity, and perhaps a degree of envy, with the suspicion that the mad, agonised though they may be, are having a more interesting, or at least more significant, time of it. It’s not hard to imagine a near-future when the neurobiologists will have identified the physiological bases for all the major mental disorders, but I doubt that, even then, we ...”

“... masturbation is her suggestion.) No one would argue that the weak are incapable of abuse – it may be their only form of affirmation. It is nonetheless a problem when the reputed aggressor is so manifestly, as in this case, in the process of losing all his powers. Marsh is supported in her speculation, however, by the theme, unmistakable in the poetry, of ...”