“... us giants,’ wrote Jacques de Vitry, a l3th-century bishop whose years in the Middle East may have encouraged him to be less ethnocentric than the majority of his contemporaries. A more general issue raised by Friedman’s book is that of the nature and functions of the stereotype, and in particular the stereotype of the alien, the ‘other’. As he ...”

“... his destiny. Brookner takes the dire risk that her heroine’s literary debacle or misdemeanour may spread back into the whole image of the novel and spoil it in retrospect for the reader. That this does not happen shows what a humorous and humane as well as accomplished artist she is. She abounds in consciousness to a point that would satisfy even a Henry ...”

“... For one of the problems Pinckney’s narrator has to face up to is that, no matter how scornful he may be about his relations and acquaintances with their high-falutin ideas about being Also Chosen, he himself is no sort of hero by any reckoning. All he has to offer in place of Negro Firstism is his own jejune belief in the solitary artist, the lonely black ...”

“... father’s own failure to win a Cambridge fellowship in 1877 – Jane Emery suggests that Macaulay may have been anxious not to outstrip her beloved father academically. There is certainly an air of defeatism in Macaulay’s person as well as in her work, about which she was consistently self-deprecating: ‘I have no wish to be a great writer. My touch is for ...”

“... The practice of ‘blacking up’, which has died out in the surviving forms of the morris dance, may in fact have had its roots in the pagan ritual of smearing ash on the face, and the elements of battle mime may have originated in vegetation symbolism based on the battle of the seasons. But it is clear that by the 16th ...”

“... and self-evidently central to Chardin’s painting, has altered.’ Indeed it has, and there may be ample reason to worry about what cyber-space and virtual reality are going to do to the so-called Gutenberg galaxy. But though one may share his nostalgia for the book, his love for the illuminating detail of ...”

“... Modernism’s scene of emergence and triumph in America, “Frost” and “Pound” may turn out to be not so much names of authors who quarrelled over basic issues as they are signs of cultural forces in struggle, whose difference presented itself to Frost in 1913 as a choice between mass circulation and avant-garde little ...”

“... explored. He suggests, and rightly, that the most compelling evidence for the association may be found among those who left Dorchester, Old England, for Dorchester, New England. The godly were convinced that with reformation in religion would come reformation in society. Luxury, pride and fornication offended God, but these vices brought catastrophe ...”

“... them. Moïse’s presidential guard didn’t do much, if anything, to stop the attack. They may have been complicit. Only Moïse and his wife, Martine, were shot; she is said to be convalescing in Florida. The judge who declared Moïse dead said he hadn’t been able to interview anyone who admitted to being on the scene.Moïse moved quicky from obscure ...”

“... less deadly over time, because a virus that kills its host will not then transmit to others. This may be true of a very deadly virus that kills its host early, but with Sars-CoV-2, most infected people have mild symptoms, and most deaths are two weeks or more after infection, while the virus is most transmissible much earlier, peaking approximately between ...”

“... means (and probably is the origin of) ‘swindle’. Visiting Venice, Sebald thinks two young men may be following him. ‘The fear passed across my mind that these two men who were looking at me now had already crossed my path more than once since my arrival.’ He takes off for Verona, where he sees (or thinks he sees) the same men again: I became aware ...”

“... and as a theologian to evade it. Interrogated in the Tower in Cromwell’s presence in early May 1535, he was asked – according to the indictment – whether he accepted that Henry was now the earthly head of the English church, and replied: ‘I will not meddle with any such matters.’ A letter More wrote to his favourite daughter, Margaret ...”

“... in the making. Most of the Venezuelan opposition boycotted the presidential election held last May, in which Nicolás Maduro was standing for a second term, and refused to recognise his victory or the legitimacy of his new term in office. Within hours of Guaidó’s announcement, by contrast, the US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, among other ...”

“... as on the whole an agreeable experience but one controlled by mostly unspoken taboos. The boys may play with the village children, but not after reaching the age of seven, when they are sent off to school, their fees paid by a rich grandfather. When out riding they raise their hats to foot passengers: ‘Mum said this was important, otherwise people would ...”

“... study of the past tense is ‘the only case I know in which two great systems of Western thought may be tested and compared . . . like ordinary scientific hypotheses’. As for his own theory of the tense, it is ‘an opening statement in the latest round of a debate on how the mind works that has raged for centuries’ – this book never runs low on ...”