“... the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Field commanders, with their limited local knowledge, may have written dozens of reports referring to Jews as ‘useless mouths’ or ‘surplus population’, but that does not mean that the Holocaust was really about food shortages or land management. Why were these killers in the Soviet Union to begin with? Why ...”

“... called White Teeth ‘fizzing’ – and it’s been called many similar things since – which may sound a little misplaced with its hint of champagne, but it captures something of the boldness and variety of a novel that is 462 pages long and peopled with a generous selection of Londoners, immigrant and otherwise, who are followed over two or three ...”

“... measures should remain off-limits. Nevertheless, the self-conscious design of an emergency regime may well be the best available defence against a panic-driven cycle of permanent destruction. One thing only is clear. There is no chance of a carefully modulated response unless we take some critical distance from the reigning rhetoric of the moment. George Bush ...”

“... This is not a question of ‘values’ or ‘morals’: it is a question of sober fact. We may not have the evidence to answer it, but it is a scientific question, nevertheless. You can be sure that, if any evidence supporting the claim were discovered, the Vatican would not be reticent in promoting it. Indeed, the Vatican acts in a quasi-scientific ...”

“... Vienna. Dolf was in Britain only temporarily, however, awaiting a visa for the United States. In May 1940, he sailed for New York. Joyce was devastated. Less than a month later, against all expectations, she went too. The American edition of Mrs Miniver had been selected as a Book of the Month Club Choice, and her publishers wanted her to promote it. Both ...”

“... killing. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow. It may be the density of the shadow that fills today’s computer nerds with a thrilling dread. But it also fills them with a kind of experience, and one has to look at the boys and men of the modern military to see where the story begins its descent towards an ...”

“... less, as well as if a promontory were.’ But even if the whole feels the loss of a part, the part may not feel the loss of the whole. It is what happens to the clod or the promontory that counts, and in his earlier poem about metempsychosis, ‘The Progress of the Soul’, Donne describes the soul entering a whale so vast that it is as if ‘seas from ...”

“... When Luis Miguel Dominguín, the celebrated torero, died at the age of 69 in May 1996, the obituaries were many and generous. They recalled his curious relationship with Ernest Hemingway, his love affairs with the likes of Ava Gardner, and that he was the father of the famous singer Miguel Bosé. They made much of his close friendship with Picasso, and Le Monde quoted from his brief work of 1960, Pour Pablo ...”

“... My​ last visit to Gaza had been in May 2014, just before Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, an assault that resulted in the deaths of more than two thousand Gazans – combatants and civilians – and the destruction of eighteen thousand homes. When I went back less than three years later the changes were evident everywhere ...”

“... were mostly women, dressed in jeans and T-shirts. With a big smile and the male chauvinism that may always be part of the culture of car manufacturing, my guide, from the all-powerful works council, said I was looking at the ‘Wolfsburg marriage market’: ‘The lads drop by here when they have a break to see what’s on offer.’ Many of the changes were ...”

“... and indeed, in the end, agrees with them (except about book titles). Still, whatever historians may say, legends of King Arthur have remained deep-rooted in popular imagination, giving rise to whole libraries of fiction, and one Hollywood movie after another. Higham’s aim is, first, to demolish the wild theories that have gained currency in recent ...”

“... since it is intended to be seen close to the spectator, every kind of finish possible to the hand may be wisely lavished; yet which is not a miniature, nor in any wise petty or ignoble. In the second, the figures are of life size, or a little more, and it represents the class of great pictures in which the boldest execution is used, but all brought to ...”

“... author (or his female narrator) could imagine. The answer – sovereignty over their husbands – may disappoint; we would prefer if she had said ‘over themselves’. But that concept had yet to come. Chaucer took more risks with his representation of Criseyde. Troilus, her suitor, is a courtly lover so passive that he now reads like a caricature (a ...”

“... can affect us doubly. We respond to the presented image – the horse in its horseyness – but may also sense the pressure of the person holding the charcoal. Interpreting a particular image, we examine its surface, hoping to discern the intelligence behind it. In interpreting several images and noting how they differ, we might assemble a basis for a ...”

“... time to leave America. ‘Not knowing much about contemporary Palestine,’ Lahav writes, ‘she may have imagined Zion as an empty land waiting to be redeemed by idealistic Jewish pioneers.’ As Lahav says, Meir must have been aware of the work of the Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner, whose ‘frontier thesis’ saw settler colonialism as a ...”