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“... An informal Times feature on literary classics, published recently, included a list drawn up by a director of Penguin Classics: ‘The 50 Greatest Classics (pre-1900).’ Such lists can be dispiriting, and it could be said of this one that it had too little Shakespeare and no short poems at all (in such contexts, ‘great’ means ‘long ...”

“... the monarchy: the Union Jack flew alongside the Ceylon flag; a new constitution was drafted by an LSE professor, Ivor Jennings; Colombo debutantes were presented at Buckingham Palace; and, thanks to some genealogical ingenuity, George VI was recognised as the latest monarch in the ancient line of Kandyan kings. While the rest of the empire in Asia ...”

“... of its most vulnerable young people. William’s mother, Christine Lindsay, had been brought up by her grandparents, both of whom died before she was nineteen. She had one child, John, with her first partner; two, Robert and Shannon, with her second; and two more, Chloe and William, with her third. By the time William was ...”

“... Belgium in 1943 while distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets, Améry himself had been brutally tortured by the Gestapo, and then deported to Auschwitz. He managed to survive, but could never look at his torments as things of the past. He insisted that those who are tortured remain tortured, and that their trauma is irrevocable. Like many survivors of Nazi death ...”

“... Dominica. But earlier that day he had heard on the radio that the centre was hosting an event run by the organisation Troubles, Tragedy and Trauma. He told me that he felt ‘compelled to go down there’.In 1991, Andy’s older brother, Tony Harrison, a private in the Parachute Regiment stationed in Belfast, was shot dead ...”

“... as irritating as it is arousing. His descant about a Diasporist art seems at one minute to be describing a universal condition and, at the next, the special pains of his own studio, or life history, or tribe. Historic generalisation or confession? Both, of course, but the boundaries between the two are mobile, folding deeper and deeper into each ...”

“... the Royal Court re Kafka’s Dick, now put off until September. Their next play is an adaptation by Howard Barker of Women beware women, and the production after that The Normal Heart, an American play about Aids. This is referred to at the theatre as ‘Men beware men’. New York, 14 February. Lunch with S. at the Harvard Club. Grander (or certainly ...”

“... wives. This year the Liberal Democrats followed a fortnight later, swallowed up like every party by the vulgar vastness of Blackpool, as the whole of Northern England arrives to see the Lights. Labour took the third slot, also at Blackpool, and the Conservatives brought matters to a close, at Bournemouth, well into October. There was a time, long ago, when ...”

“... described gaily in the first part of her book. Then, when Medawar was 54, he was partly paralysed by a stroke and lived with increasing disability, because of further strokes, for another 18 years. After about a year his mind recovered its old activity and his enthusiasm for travel and social life returned. In spite of his disabilities and of frequent medical ...”

“... are concerned with her Catholicism. For any necessary background there are the volumes written by her two daughters. Susan Chitty insists that they are only memoirs and of course she can say what she likes about her own book, Now to my Mother, but she is being a little unfair to that of her half-sister Lyndall Hopkinson, ominously entitled Nothing to ...”

“... Some friends of mine at Paramount wanted to make it. Columbia changed its mind. I decided to stick by my friends. From a cottage in Somerset I tried to make sense of the transatlantic phone calls. I have on occasion bought a Sunday paper in Crewkerne and had dinner that night on Rodeo Drive. I was approached to direct a Mafia film called Donnie Brasco. The ...”

“... the best generals, the clever and hard-working the best staff-officers, the stupid and lazy could be fitted in as regimental officers; but the stupid and hard-working were a positive menace and had to be got rid of as quickly as possible. Douglas Haig belonged to the fourth group. That at least would probably ...”

“... have been watching. But it is a good description of the coverage of the football which was offered by Patrick Barclay, by other British journalists, and by experts and commentators who were heard from on television. The 1990 World Cup produced, as it was bound to, its ...”

“... For the major features of the literature she identifies as ‘puritan-provincial’ are to be found in other national literatures as well, including those of Catholic France, Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe. There are also non-puritan tributaries feeding into streams of American and Scottish literature that can account for some of these ...”

“... language, and has acquired the semi-mystical consciousness of the tribes-people. He is taken in by the McIvor family – Jock and Ellen, their small daughters Janet and Meg and nephew Lachlan Beattie. Soon his presence is causing concern. The community lives in a state of apprehension (what is feared is not at all clear) about the blacks, and it is thought ...”