“... Hand’ as a ‘malign proleptic elegy’, he makes way for a 1966 discussion of the poem by Paul de Man. The idea is to show a Theory guru in pre-deconstructive mode using the humanistic idiom that he would later despise, and de Man does not disappoint: ‘Romantic literature, at its highest moments, encompasses the greatest degree of generality in an ...”

“... distance ... Proverbs express it very simply: ‘The weaver knows not what he weaves’; ‘At the foot of the lighthouse there is no light’; ‘The prophet is without honour in his own country.’ 1974 To venture a guess at what will for ever remain his secret, it is not entirely improbable that, in pondering his road and its destination, Erasmus arrived ...”

“... down at all those who have not found true love, below.’ The yard boy’s beloved rabbit’s-foot fern ends his story by sending messages of retribution to some Spanish bayonet plants (‘harsh and green with spikes that end up in black tips like stilettos’), which uproot themselves to move against the woman who has left him. Later narratives take on a ...”

“... A collection of essays entitled The New Museology suggests where suitable candidates may be found. Paul Greenhalgh is one. He cheerfully announces that ‘in these times of desperate financial pressure’ – can he be referring to Mrs Thatcher’s ‘economic renaissance’? – museums ‘cannot exist simply as a receptacle guarding our heritage, or as a ...”

“... Press has been publishing Burke’s writings and speeches under the overall editorship of Paul Langford, the first systematically new edition since that compiled between 1792 and 1827. No one reading these genuinely engrossing volumes can doubt the calibre of Burke’s mind, the power of his language, or the enduring pungency of his political ...”

“... her how to behave And to bury her better She lay there rosy-cheeked In her oaken coffin On one foot she was wearing A little red boot With splashes of fresh mud To the end of my life I’ll search For that other boot she lost As a translator of this poem, and of many others in the book, I naturally have reservations about some of Pennington’s ...”

“... their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone/They shall have stars at elbow and foot,’ as Dylan Thomas wrote: ‘And death shall have no dominion.’ On the other hand, decaying flesh could transmit the holiness of the soul it once sheltered through contact relics. Dirt from a grave, water in which a saint had been washed for burial, straw ...”

“... successful museum, I walked back across the slightly swaying Millennium Bridge towards St Paul’s and, looking back towards Bankside, I began to think about the life and work of Hagop Sandaldjian.Sandaldjian was born in Alexandria in 1931. His family, who came from Armenia, resettled in Yerevan in 1948, and he embarked on a career as a violinist ...”

“... also been peddling an idea: deliverology. Tom Bower gives us the pitch. He reports Blair telling Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, back in 2007: ‘I learned by bitter experience during ten years as prime minister the problems of getting the government machine to deliver what I wanted. I created a Delivery Unit, and that was a great success. It transformed ...”

“... and police between 1954 and 1962 during the Algerian War. In November 2000, two former generals, Paul Aussaresses and Jacques Massu, made long declarations to Le Monde, in which they admitted that men under their command had tortured suspects and killed prisoners. Massu expressed his regret, said he no longer believed that such violence was a necessary part ...”

“... companion, swam in the pool, which was even more impressively blue than the sea at the foot of the cliff. Sunshine, cypresses, cicadas, scented air, the physical drama: all the sense-heightening Mediterranean stuff. Kurt Vonnegut, a house guest, had disappeared: his photographer wife, Jill Krementz, couldn’t find him anywhere on the eight acres ...”

“... while housed such diverse inhabitants as McCullers, W.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Gypsy Rose Lee, Paul and Jane Bowles and Richard Wright. (Auden seems to have been an especially terrible housemate, complaining about excessive use of toilet paper and telling people their colds weren’t physical but mental.) Carson was one of the original members; she arrived ...”

“... been reissued recently by Penguin, in hardback and with new introductions. It follows the hapless Paul Pennyfeather, who, expelled from Oxford for a misdemeanour he did not commit, wanders through an unsuccessful career as a schoolmaster before becoming engaged to the grand and wealthy Margot Beste-Chetwynde. As it happens, her riches derive principally from ...”

“... marriage and the family’s move from Rotherhithe to Brockley – London still, or just, with one foot in open country rather than river. She kept up with advanced ideas: she wanted to call her second son Oscar, got away with Walter (after Pater), but was confounded when at the age of nine he chose to answer only to his middle name, David. She had gone up in ...”

“... squeezing pimples or playing conkers: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmeralda, more or less on a whim. That’s my score to date. Three. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend ...”