“... against coherence, and some seem to be mere wanderings into an inescapable mess. At times we may feel there is a kind of plot line around the idea of putting on a show, or politics as stealing a show, but the feeling doesn’t last long. When chariot races invaded a 21st-century New York I thought for a moment that the projectionist (if there are such ...”

“... a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness. At the core of this moral character lies the spirit of liberty: liberty ...”

“... set in the working-class communities of the North-East in the 1970s. The true answer, I think, may be more uncanny. Barker’s writing has gravitated to war because there’s something wild and unstable in her idiosyncratic vision. In wartime, those social and moral and imaginative securities which might usually seem like fixtures are all overturned. In ...”

“... apnoea enter deep sleep, their airway becomes blocked by the tissues around their throat. They may gasp for air, and stir hundreds of times a night to a level just below conscious awareness. People with sleep apnoea wake up in the morning feeling as if they’ve slept normally, but are chronically tired because their sleep isn’t restorative. As a medical ...”

“... hurt. Keegan does something rare in creating archives of unhappiness, showing the way one sorrow may reverberate with another, how pressure can activate the pain of an old bruise. As a boy, short on Christmas gifts, Furlong had longed for a particular jigsaw puzzle, which had a picture of a farm. Instead he was given a nailbrush, a hot-water bottle and a ...”

“... poison indiscriminately wasn’t compelling even on its own terms. ‘However rapidly technology may invent new uses for insecticides and new ways of applying them,’ Carson wrote, ‘it is likely to find the insects keeping a lap ahead.’Sixty years on, that doesn’t seem like such a safe bet. Carson’s work led to the banning of DDT in agricultural ...”

“... and ‘coherence’ – are, in Thomas Kuhn’s sense, incommensurable. One marker may prize originality or inventiveness; another may be a stickler for accuracy. It’s largely a matter of temperament. More authoritarian personalities may be inclined to emphasise the ...”

“... intent. A manila envelope made in and posted from a Manila recently under the control of Marcos may contain an explosive device, particularly if the cover of the book it ostensibly contains has a savage Nicholas Garland illustration of a wild horseman wielding a bloody scimitar, surrounded by the decapitated victims of his havoc. If the poems of Manila ...”

“... last century were children ‘at last perceived as a separate kind of creature’. Whatever one may think of Ms Moorehead’s view of Medieval Europe – it comes just after a sentence which declares that the Black Death drove all fit people to work on the land, a view so wrong one hardly knows where to start correcting it – the tone of confidence in ...”

“... the stricken village or town ... This is Gavin Ewart, who adds: If you’re accident-prones you may hear those dread tones and meet that baleful eye! There are also substantial essays on our political culture, on economic and social policy, on defence and foreign affairs. Collectively, what they propose is a new polity based upon a redefined notion of ...”

“... and thereby divert attention from the principal objectives of the uprisings. South African whites may ultimately regret their support for the Zulu Inkatha movement and their occasional tolerance of the activities of the black consciousness Azanian People’s Organisation. Likewise the Israelis are beginning to see the folly of having helped the increasingly ...”

“... of tempo. But the two men were surely creative opposites in a far more fundamental way. Mozart may on occasion have attempted to imitate Haydn (the curiously athematic slow movement of the E flat major String Quartet from the set he dedicated to Haydn, which draws on the slow movement from the older composer’s quartet in the same key Op.20 Nol; or the ...”

“... the Prime Minister’s son, Brunei and Harrods. The story which surfaced in the Observer of 18 May 1986 was, to be frank, a bit puzzling. It was decorated with a large photograph of the Swami in beard and beads, and he certainly could not complain of the way in which he was introduced to the British public: A rich and mysterious Indian guru is emerging as ...”

“... and another conception of the good, both inadequate. Other people have said this, and they may be right. But MacIntyre is peculiar in thinking that this is just about all that needs to be said about liberalism. What this line of criticism shows is that liberalism has failed to understand itself: but that, on MacIntyre’s own admissions, is true of all ...”

“... and access to wealth almost invariably affects or confirms a fictional character’s identity. It may do so for the better or worse, and either way it tends to act as an enticement to readers. We like to think of the wealthy as enjoying their wealth, but we also like to be told that they don’t always enjoy it. In fiction the rich and the rest of us can ...”