“... How does​ Shakespeare look, after #MeToo and Black Lives Matter? Scenes of sexual coercion, from Richard III to Pericles, have become more immediate. In Measure for Measure, Isabella’s predicament – should she agree to sleep with Angelo, corrupt deputy to the Duke of Vienna, in order to save her brother from execution? – gets audiences on her side ...”

“... separately back in 1984 (War Diaries: Politics and War in the Mediterranean, January 1943-May 1945). Those diaries were published pretty much entire and contain fine descriptions of North Africa as well as sharp pen portraits and nippy asides. And besides, they describe an extremely delicate and fascinating mission, told as deftly as it was ...”

“... of his having ‘arrived’. In daydream moments in between the usual author agonising, Podhoretz may have anticipated the publication of Making It as a climactic solo bringing down the curtain on act one of his career and a springboard for his next move. The book was certainly stagecrafted that way. If so, he misjudged the composition of the audience and the ...”

“... seems to have preferred the expression ‘the Jewish Catastrophe’. At this stage ‘holocaust’ may have been more commonly attached to the prospect of nuclear war. The shift undoubtedly came in 1963 with the controversy surrounding Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, which set in motion an intense public interrogation of Jewish conduct during the Nazi ...”

“... these bitter contests. Bork was a cutting-edge neo-conservative of the 1980s, but his successors may well go far beyond him, striking down laws protecting workers and the environment, supporting the destruction of basic civil liberties in the war on terrorism, and engaging in a wholesale attack on the premises of 20th-century constitutionalism. Or then ...”

“... phase of the 1920s and 1930s. This joining of the festive with the lethal provokes thought. There may well be some long line in English culture that links the Christmas visit to The Mousetrap with a point at least as far back as that splendid moment in Medieval literature when the Green Knight, his head cut off, stoops to pick up the rolling object, and rides ...”

“... Revolutionary books is the honesty with which Wordsworth admits his dalliance with inhumaneness: Richard Gravil writes very well in his essay here about the curious tenacity of this ‘Robespierrean alter ego’ in Wordsworth’s self-portrait – a lingering sense of the terrible excitement that might attend what Auden called ‘the necessary ...”

“... might (as they did) exploit her gesture? Similarly, Labour’s war on the grammar schools may have been politically naive (why end selectivity in the state sector while leaving the private sector untouched?), but it accorded with Williams’s deepest convictions. ‘I have never understood or accepted that some people, through the accident of ...”

“... and approved them. ‘Prediction is dangerous,’ the TLS’s critic conceded, ‘but The Hobbit may well prove a classic.’ A few days later, another anonymous review in the Times endorsed this verdict: ‘All who love that kind of children’s book that can be read and reread by adults should take note that a new star has appeared in this ...”

“... technique to imitate “magic picture pad”,’ reads an obscure note from 1970-71. ‘There may be the question of resemblance or substitution (Freud).’ Maybe with a nod to toys like Etch A Sketch, Johns here alludes to the ‘mystic writing pad’ that Freud used to describe how the unconscious operates, the way it retains inscriptions even ...”

“... leadership had insisted on the deployment. In 2007 the chief of the general staff, General Richard Dannatt, told the British ambassador to Afghanistan that this decision was a result of the army’s fear of further troop cuts. They believed soldiers who had finished their tours in Iraq would be dismissed if the generals didn’t put them to use ...”

“... and representatives from the world’s liberation movements. Julia Hervé, the daughter of Richard Wright, came from Paris to interpret from English into French. I did the same, into English, for the Cleavers. ‘We are an integral part of Africa’s history,’ Cleaver said at the conference. ‘White America teaches us that our history begins on the ...”

“... he came to regret (his account of this episode has been deleted from the English translation). In May 1969 the Minister transferred him back to the Academy’s Institute of Physics in Moscow where his career had begun, with a modest salary to supplement his Academician’s income. Sakharov describes his scientific work from then on as minor: most of his ...”

“... carry on the business of life to good advantage, without learning.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, sir, that may be true in cases where learning cannot possibly be of any use; for instance, this boy rows us as well without learning, as if he could sing the song of Orpheus to the Argonauts, who were the first sailors.’ He then called to the boy, ‘What would you ...”

“... So the baby was put up for adoption, and Angela became Deborah, with parents called Cathy and Richard Harry, also known as Caggie and Dick. Caggie’s family had once owned a bank in Ridgewood, New Jersey; Dick worked as a salesman for Alkan Silk Woven Labels in Paterson. A sister, Martha, arrived six years later. ‘My little accidental family’ gets ...”