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“... in the 15 years she’s been writing novels. Her first, The Cast Iron Shore (1996), won the David Higham Prize for Fiction; her second, When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), won the Orange Prize over the shoo-in, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth; her third, Still Here (2002), was longlisted for the Booker Prize; her fourth, The Clothes on Their Backs ...”

“... CDU-FDP coalition and opened the possibility of a new progressive alliance. The first Red-Green coalition took office in Hesse in 1985. In shabby trainers, Joschka Fischer, once a street-fighter of the hard left, was sworn in as Hesse’s environment minister. By the end of the 1980s, with the pugnacious Oskar Lafontaine, the prime minister of ...”

“... The title of David Abulafia’s magisterial book comes, as he reminds us, from a Hebrew blessing, to be recited when setting eyes on the Mediterranean: ‘Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the Universe, who made the Great Sea.’ His book is a two-fold history: first of the trade and the traders who discovered the sea, created its ports and never ceased thereafter to animate it in pursuit of commerce ...”

“... recognisable. Only her fingers are caught up in an area of abstraction: bright red, yellow and green blocks that may not be fingers at all, but something she is wearing. In the Eliot portrait of 1938, two hangings on the wall behind him give a taste of Lewis in a less objective mood. In 1938, the Royal Academy refused to hang the picture. They had spotted ...”

“... word for word. Behind Bosanquet’s analysis, however, lies the overwhelming influence of T.H. Green. As Bosanquet acknowledges in the chapter I have been quoting, he makes ‘great use’ of the analysis of freedom offered by Green in his Principles of Political Obligation, originally published in 1886. ...”

“... idealists. What do these ancient arguments have to do with the world of Ruling Performance, with David Pannick’s reflections on the English judiciary, or with Vernon Bogdanor’s Encyclopedia of Political Institutions? For one thing, they cast light on the hopes and fears most of us entertain in the face of government activity of all sorts. Realists who ...”

“... In​ Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, David Farrier reaches into the past in order to envisage the deep future. This can only ever be an extrapolation of the present – our knowledge, experience, language and ideas – but Farrier is relaxed about this. His focus is on the way life has been recorded in the substance of the world, the ways we can trace human impact and the ways we, in turn, might be traced in time to come ...”

“... There are three false starts in David Mitchell’s slippery new novel. At the beginning of number9dream the narrator sits in a chaotic Tokyo café staring into an empty coffee cup. Eiji Miyake is a mousy young man who has come to the city to find his father, but he lacks the wherewithal to contact the lawyer who knows his address ...”

“... Van Heerden’s ‘My Cuban’ broods: ‘Oh how we float, the flower of the Republic’s youth. Green our uniforms, red the flush on our cheeks, fresh the wind, Africa an open hand beneath us ...’The Afrikaans section, 18 writers, is confined to prose fiction. The times have produced such an abundance of writers that the editors say this number could ...”

“... racial degeneration. Luckily the hearties don’t have it all their own way. Michael Crick’s and David Smith’s book describes how, at the same time as Stan Cullis was assembling his Wolves team, Matt Busby at Manchester United was embarking on a managerial career uniquely committed to attractive attacking football. The triumph’n tragedy saga of United ...”

“... Lutyens, Giles Gilbert Scott, Charles Holden and lesser lights such as Edwin Cooper or W. Curtis Green. Practically every Georgian terrace they can find features in the book. They disapprove of the City’s ‘untidy and expanding cluster’ of skyscrapers, and are more pleased with the beaux-arts plan that defines the placing of skyscrapers around One ...”

“... them were some of the most noble families in the land. This theme is not entirely neglected in David Cannadine’s book – it inevitably rears its head on many occasions – but it does not form the main focus of his interest. This is a pity, for there can be few historians equally familiar with both the general social history and the particular details ...”

“... their tight formations, the ranks hold each other up; soloists are apt to droop. Dickens finishes David Copperfield uncharacteristically: ‘O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!’ It is intensely ...”

“... could turn into a performance piece, as it seemed to be for Duchamp when he decided to stay in the Green Hotel in Pasadena in 1963, which was seen as an allusion to his much earlier Green Box, a miniature portfolio of his principal work; or for Vito Acconci, following strangers and recording their movements – or ...”

“... The Man of a Thousand and One Voices is more impressive in the carnival posters, with his face lit green by hocus-pocus. In the flesh he looks more like an accountant who’s had a bad day and stumbled into the wrong part of town. He was shaking his head, looking sad about the whole thing. I was sad about it, too, and I let him know, in so many ...”