“... treated as a vulgar functionary by his authors, is, in Brewer’s eyes, a hero of literature. John Bell, cashing in on the end of perpetual copyright to produce elegant anthologies of poetry and drama, had more influence on the formation of a literary canon than any critic. The history of literature for Brewer is the history of printed matter, and of its ...”

“... combination of precision and lyricism is very effective: ‘He pauses a moment before ringing the bell – there’s a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness.’ In Consciousness and the ...”

“... well as their heirs, such as T. Coraghessan Boyle, Lydia Davis, Rick Moody, William Vollmann and David Foster Wallace. None of these writers – however popular or influential, however frequently their writing appeared in the Paris Review or Conjunctions or the year-end Best American and Pushcart anthologies – managed to stir him. The ‘tone of mandarin ...”

“... a false narrative, a doorstep is smeared with shit, a dead cat is found hanging from the bell-pull, the words assassins and a mort are daubed on the shop’s blind. The police are only half-helpful: as one investigating officer says to another, ‘It smells of Kraut in here.’ The Krulls decide – not inaccurately – that Hans is the bringer, or ...”

“... Nancy Mitford two years later to distinguish between U and non-U. From across the Atlantic came David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd, which taught us to separate modern man into the two camps of the inner directed and the other-directed. This way of observing the world suggested that there were no natural laws, that nothing was absolute or determined. Instead ...”

“... were born on 13 July 1793, in a thatched tenement on Helpston High Street, next door to the Blue Bell public house. There were two bedrooms and two downstairs rooms: in Clare’s words, his childhood home was ‘as roomy and comfortable as any of our neighbours’. There was an apple tree in the garden, which, Clare says in his autobiography, ‘stood’ his ...”

“... he deplores the neglect of English art, blaming (among others) Roger Fry, who, with Clive Bell, ‘made it just fine to despise new English art in the name of the French avant-garde’: for them ‘any imitation of the Ecole de Paris, however pallid’ was preferable ‘to anything else, however strong’. In another essay, Hughes dwells on Howard ...”

“... simplicity,’ ‘hypocrisy is suggested by the discord between the organ (A major) and the church bell (E flat),’ ‘a series of major triads ... are (of course) Britten’s language for “naturalness”.’ We do not yet have a fully imagined interpretation of Britten’s work, although Carpenter in this extremely readable and well organised survey of the ...”

“... do. But so also do a collection of people whom I’ve never seen before, and in such numbers that David Hyde Pierce, who is presenting it, is practically elbowed out of the way. These turn out to be the backers who, of course, have every reason to be pleased and indeed one of them duly adjusts my tie. I am then bundled out through a back door and across the ...”

“... to the ancient world, Cyriac drew only the antique components of the building. He ignored the bell tower and other additions that recorded its conversion into a Christian church. Revisiting Athens in 1444, he became the first Latin writer in centuries to call the Acropolis by its proper name. On good days the living ancient world seemed almost within ...”

“... keep the world in balance.All except the hero – a word which always set Le Guin’s inner alarm-bell ringing – a young wizard of immense power called Ged. He made my ten-year-old self think: ‘Surely I could be a wizard.’ Ged shows off to a girl and to his rivals by attempting to bring an ancient beauty back from the dead. This releases from the ...”

“... out to be a Spanish chef capable and indeed only too pleased to produce delicious pre-Elizabeth David food for the ravenous Radletts.13 February. ‘God’s honour’ we used to swear as boys. This remembered in the middle of an acute attack of arthritis pain this morning when I’m marooned on the sofa, cold, thirsty but unable to move. ‘I don’t know ...”

“... political upheavals of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015 and the resignation of David Cameron the following summer. (Theresa May initially hoped to refocus on ‘JAMs’ – Just About Managing families – but lost all ideological confidence along with her parliamentary majority in June last year.) The phrase was used as a way of signalling ...”

“... Like Eggers (whose memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, was puffed by Moody), David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann, Moody spurns the eye-dropper technique of minimalism that was fashionable when he was a nervous colt in the 1980s in favour of a bachelor-guy pack-rat approach where everything the author has ever seen, read, felt or ...”

“... telephone several times and was pretty confident she could handle it. The bandy, glistening dumb-bell was heavier than she expected. But she had expected the call: she knew who this must be.   ‘Yes?’ said Mary.   A thin voice started calling. Telephones were clearly less efficient instruments of communication than people let on. For instance, you ...”