“... and village squires and evening parties. James’s view of the materials available to the writer may strike us today as somewhat old-fashioned and unenterprising, but there is a basic shrewdness in what he says. Without the ‘density of felt life’ which the artist almost involuntarily was vouchsafed in these materials he is thrown back on his own ...”

“... Max Hastings and Paul Dacre and John Witherow and Alan Rusbridger behave like this. Dominic Lawson may well have said to Charles Moore in some gentleman’s outfitters what Sharon says to Georgina: ‘Well, we can’t both buy this, can we, babe? And I know who looks best in it.’ Both women, you see, are competing for the attention of Douglas Holloway, the ...”

“... did not edit the Bannatyne Manuscript. It was edited by his colleague in the Court of Session, Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, whose Annals led Sir Walter Scott to laud him as ‘the restorer of Scottish history’. Does it matter that the notorious cry of ‘Whaur’s yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?’ greeted Home’s tragedy in London, not Edinburgh? It ...”

“... ever managed to become accepted as providing the model for ‘correct’ speech.) Be that as it may, it would of course be grossly misleading to suggest that in England people do not care much about their language, or that they have no views about what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. Floods of letters to the BBC, not to mention regular complaints in ...”

“... Gallant has been offered a regular platform under the benign aegis of William Maxwell and, later, David Menaker. Although they span almost half a century – the earliest was published in 1953, the latest in 1995, Gallant’s 73rd year – they are nonetheless eerily consistent in voice and preoccupation. Gallant writes about exiled people: characters in ...”

“... David Soren​ of the University of Arizona was excavating the remains of a villa just outside Lugnano in Umbria in 1992 when he uncovered a fifth-century mass grave: 47 small skeletons had been interred in layers, some pressed into large amphorae. A number of them were newborn babies. The deepest layer held only a corpse or two, but the higher levels were increasingly populated ...”

“... reported case of human infection with the Zika virus was in 1964. Another Entebbe virologist, David Simpson, had a 36-hour fever, some back pain, a headache and a rash. Three days later he had recovered apart from some spots. For many years the Zika virus was thought to be unimportant. There was no evidence to suggest that it could do anything more than ...”

“... Writing a love letter to the profession, rather than the subject matter, of literary study may well be the most daring and original aspect of the book. Many literature professors have declared their undying love for reading and teaching, but few have admitted to loving the academic game itself. More typically, they view joining the profession as the ...”

“... detect the ultraviolet spectrum, see something very different when they look at one another. Wires may be right to invoke the biblical notion of uncleanness, though not for the reason she gives. In Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas identifies ‘unclean’ creatures as those that inhabit multiple realms and live between categories. That’s the source of their ...”

“... accompanied by the devoted Ruth, who is a Moabite and will become the progenitrix of the line of David. This is striking because elsewhere in the Bible all intercourse with Moab is prohibited. Havrelock shrewdly notes that Ruth and Naomi are a reversal of Lot’s daughters, who incestuously engendered the Moabites and their neighbours the Ammonites. Of all ...”

“... knew the Old Testament. Upavon’s chapel is called the Cave of Adullam, the stronghold where David sought refuge from Saul’s armies (1 Samuel), presumably as a reminder of the persecution suffered by dissenters; Little Zoar, near Calne, is evidence of the fortress mentality of those strict Calvinists among the Baptists who believed that only the Elect ...”

“... around, becoming a sober, powerful and born-again buffoon. Sittenfeld, a Democrat and a liberal, may be doing more to humanise the Bush administration than all the press secretaries, publicists, apologists and spinners in the White House itself. Defending W, however, does not appear to have been the intention of the author. Several years ago, Sittenfeld ...”

“... words, were intended to make ‘new thought . . . possible’. And this, paradoxically, may also be why he is so little studied or so infrequently involved as a participant in the parliament of ‘theory’. He was too inventive, too various. Far from making new thought possible, it sometimes feels as if Deleuze’s almost manic creation of concepts ...”

“... it wasn’t altogether surprising that another gate opened, courtesy of Maurice Bowra and Lord David Cecil, to a fellowship at Oxford. The only begetter of the study of literary theory at Oxford, he became the subject’s best-known teacher there, the leading authority in the field in Britain, and one of its most acclaimed proponents in the world ...”

“... and ‘the queer little kingdom’ of Cushman’s theatrical world. Marcus notes that James may have drawn on Cushman’s menage, in heterosexual guise, for Charlotte Stant’s quasi-incestuous marriage to the father of her lover’s wife in The Golden Bowl. But she doesn’t mention James’s savage satire on female marriage in The Bostonians, or his ...”