“... it as a decoy to distract attention from a highly embarrassing story, which was emerging slowly in May and June 2003, that the long-debated Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist.’ Four weeks after the broadcast of Andrew Gilligan’s Today story, Campbell had not asked for an apology for it specifically, had not referred it to the BBC complaints ...”

“... investing something that might be called Life or Experience – it is a species of risk. Interest may or may not accrue; but art, James intimates, is a version of stocks and shares; the market fluctuates. Something is transformed – work is done on it – in the service of making interest, sustaining curiosity, keeping ...”

“... write con amore … was … no part of his character.’ Verse starved of parental love may well have problems attracting affection later. T.S. Eliot took a charitable interest in the case in 1921, but his contribution is rather reminiscent of Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre enjoining the Lowood girls to be glad of their burned breakfast: ‘We cannot ...”

“... from the other children as a literary sissy like Yates [sic] and Masters.’ In an interview with Richard Poirier for the Paris Review in 1960, a few years before his death, he reiterated that he hadn’t had ‘a very literary life’; he didn’t keep up with reviews or gossip. He told Poirier that when he first visited Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop in ...”

“... the gullible midget hero.’ This insistence on shining a new light on unlikely sexual relations may help explain why the original version of Freaks was heavily cut and edited and no longer exists; why the film, even in its edited state, was banned in Britain for thirty years; and why American audiences flocked to see it in some places ...”

“... became in his flattery, the more Berenson resolved to hold his meaty embrace at bay. ‘He may turn out too animal, too overwhelmingly masculine, too Bohemian,’ he fretted: ‘he may expect me to drink and guzzle with him.’ Even at his most decorous and ingratiating, Hemingway gave off too much of the whiff of ...”

“... professional treatment. Whatever his feelings for his wife by this point – some commentators may have come to firmer conclusions than the evidence warrants – worry and guilt were substantial elements in the mix. And then there were the uncertainties arising from his irregular relations with the Muse. He had written practically no verse between mid-1915 ...”

“... kind of noise – the sound of scholars breaking lances. Some of the likely murmurs of complaint may prove a bit churlish. Of course we should have preferred a novel, and a polished performance rather than one written as a family entertainment, and an original Austen work rather than one initiated by Richardson. Yet, if it had to be an adaptation, no work by ...”

“... think of as normal classic names: Simon, Mark, Peter, Andrew, Paul, Martin, Michael, Stephen, Richard, Robert, David. Girls’ names remained more modish: some Sarahs, Anns and Elizabeths and even some residual Marys, but also plenty of Janets, Jackies, Lisas and Debbies, who soared and plummeted through the bestseller lists in the space of a couple of ...”

“... issue the call to prayer. ‘Once you scrutinise you will always find something, however small it may be,’ the anonymous author of the Trojan Horse letter wrote. ‘By that time the damage is done.’ Michael Gove had already vented his views on sinister Islamic plots in 2006, in his book Celsius 7/7: ‘There are many Muslims across the globe, within ...”

“... finally determine what the poem says.’ ‘This is not to say,’ he adds, ‘that the same man may not be both historical scholar and critic,’ but such a man would be exercising two talents at discrete times rather than combining them in ways that respected the integrity of each. The conclusion (unhappy for many) is that the effects of one’s actions ...”

“... its use, whether state of war or threat of war or any other public emergency; none of these may be invoked as a justification. Orders from superiors are explicitly excluded as a defence, and moreover the Convention requires that wherever the torture occurred and whatever the nationality of the torturer or victim, parties must prosecute or extradite ...”

“... or another. Yet even from the restricted sample quoted something else, not so easily classified, may spring to the eye. Most such ethno-nationalist conflicts seem to happen in predominantly rural situations. Nor are they rural merely in the sense of being agricultural or non-urban – like East Anglia, say, or the Beauce plain in central France – they are ...”

“... little place is The Little Town! But for me it’s only a temporary setting. While this letter may seem harmless in tone, it is an example of the lifelong rivalry between the brothers, which Thomas felt more keenly than Heinrich. It was a gentle way of twisting the knife, letting Heinrich know that his brother had not merely written the definitive novel ...”

“... spectacle it afforded: the almost physical manifestation of Trump’s deference to Putin. It may happen again, whether as a result of the volume of sabre-rattling or the onset of war with Iran; a decision to sack Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating meddling in the 2016 election; a shutdown of the federal government to extort funds ...”