“... are often given a simple surface description that distinguishes them from all the others. It may give a clue as to what sort of person they are, and even to the role they will play in the story – rich/poor, handsome/ugly, hero/villain. Genre fiction is unembarrassedly good at this. Raymond Chandler, in The Long Goodbye: ‘Her hair was a lovely shade ...”

“... the great postmodern meganovels by Pynchon or Perec, Bolaño or García Márquez; and it may be said to rival even New Athens itself, of which the equally historical poet Elżbieta Drużbacka says: ‘This volume is so strangely magical that an endless reading is permitted in which one picks and pecks here and there, always finding interesting ...”

“... now is a public health service that is simultaneously starved, fragmented and centralised. That may seem a contradiction. Surely the point of centralising is to integrate. But this is not infrequently a perverse consequence of centrally imposed reforms: you can see the same effect in education and in the regulation of the City. To implement such reforms, a ...”

“... from BL MS Add. 25,707: Calmely as the mornings soft teares shedd Upon some rose or Violet bedd May your slumbers fall upon you All your thoughts sit easy on you Gently rocking heart and eyes With their tuneful Lullabyes There are no firm divisions between objects here, or between objects and non-objects. Tears fall, slumbers fall, thoughts sit, and all ...”

“... countries is very ancient. A more recent trend is for names that end in -an or -en. This may be enough to account for the meteoric rise on both sides of the Atlantic of Jayden, coming soon to a playground near you, a lovely sounding name, without history or significance, which first entered the US top 1000 only in 1994. Or perhaps the -en sound has ...”

“... areas on pain of losing his god-sent gift. The areas on which neither he nor his characters may touch are defined by the proximity of thought to their surface – thought visible, almost palpable, in nuggets or globules readily picked up by the vulgar. Art in other hands might have been such an area, but James took the risk – after all, it was his own ...”

“... onto the floor, picking through the motley treasures between sips from a mug whose tawny contents may have been cold tea without milk. (S)he: I have no idea whether this compromised pronoun represents sensitivity or the opposite, but it seems the best choice of a bad lot. ‘He’ is reductive in one way, ‘she’ in another, and though ‘(s)he’ seems to ...”

“... In a period of changing governments and political and economic instability Parliament itself may well have welcomed this anchorage, as ministers and policies came and went. Although in 1929 Lord Chief Justice Hewart (who had previously been a member of the Government as Attorney-General) published The New Despotism, fulminating at the impotence of the ...”

“... the blockaded area,’ the Air Ministry stated, ‘they pass a most uncomfortable time . . . It may be necessary to continue the operations for some months before a particularly stiff-necked tribe gives in, but this requires no particular effort on the part of the air forces.’ Nevertheless, ground forces were often needed as well. It was the Camel Corps ...”

“... In May 1895, the day before Oscar Wilde’s trial began, W.B. Yeats called at Wilde’s mother’s house in London to express his solidarity and that of ‘some of our Dublin literary men’ with the family. He later wrote of ‘the Britisher’s jealousy of art and artists, which is generally dormant but called into activity when the artist has gone outside his field into publicity of an undesirable kind ...”

“... an ambush ten days later. W.T. Cosgrave then succeeded to the leadership. The Civil War ended in May 1923 with the defeat of the Republicans. Three years later de Valera split from the Republicans and formed his own party, Fianna Fail, which entered the Dáil in 1927 and was elected to government in 1932. That the Dáil Government, operating underground ...”

“... None of them in doing this lost a craftsmanlike pleasure in things well and carefully made. That may be why it is almost as easy to relate the look of both Nicholson’s and Pasmore’s paintings to pots made in England (the texture of those by Bernard Leach or Michael Cardew, the sgraffito on those by Lucie Rie) as to the work of European artists such as ...”

“... a mirage at first then strengthened in appearance. She stooped before Rama, greeting him thus, ‘May the Lord bless your feet, you are Rama. I have endured years this lonely way.’ The Sage twigged on to the miracle unveiling, He took the boys aside and told them Ahalya’s story. ‘Rama, this ideal beauty is Ahalya. Formed by the gods then raised here on ...”

“... glancing at the Mozart’s manifest, ‘The coffin that had been furnished Was too small. “May we,” asked the men Charged with the task of burial, “May we break the General’s bones?” And were almost lynched for this inquiry. Eventually,’ she said, ‘he travelled on an open bier, Two sailors on the deck ...”

“... forearm Looks like the Mississippi river system Photographed from a satellite, And though she may unleash a charming smile When crouching to dance at the ball with Ivan Lendl, I have always found to admire her yet remain detached Has been no problem. But when the rain stops long enough for the true beauties To come out swinging under the outshone sun, The ...”