“... speech; all three, moreover, attend to the age-old enigma of whether betrayal of a pledge can ever be justified, and if so, in what circumstances. One of them, Miss Keays’s book, can be briefly disposed of. In her case the betrayal is twofold. First, the betrayal of a lover by the ...”

“... a fait accompli to his workers. What he actually said was: ‘Gentlemen, the Times is printed – by steam.’ The year was 1814; the proprietor was John Walter II; the new technology was the Koenig steam-driven press capable of over a thousand impressions an hour, against the 250 impressions which was all the old Stanhope iron press could manage; and his ...”

“... Is that adequate? I suspect not. The French version carried on front and back two pictures by the 43-year-old German artist Anita Albus about whom Lévi-Strauss writes enthusiastically in Chapter 20. The text refers directly to both pictures. The present English edition has a cover picture by Max Ernst, who is the ...”

“... cities and villages during the Dirty War in search of anyone answering to the definition offered by General Jorge Rafael Videla: ‘A terrorist is not just someone with a gun or a bomb but also someone who spreads ideas that are contrary to Western and Christian civilisation.’ The dictatorial regimes led successively ...”

“... Minister’s decision – with the minimum of Cabinet consultation – to play the part of an ally by sanctioning the use for that purpose of bases in Britain. The best of the debate justified Mr Healey’s words of praise, and those of other participants. A high standard of argument was achieved, there was far less of the usual bombast, posturing and silly ...”

“... on consumer feedback), the most reliable guide to British restaurants, has an interesting article by two scientists on their work with trained ‘taste panels’. It seems that some people are physiologically more sensitive to some chemicals than others and therefore perceive them differently: ‘a matter of taste’ is a figure of speech which would appear ...”

“... May. This is the book of the exhibition. Modern interest in Arcimboldo dates from his inclusion, by means of enlarged photographs, in the exhibition ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’, organised by Alfred Barr at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1936. Margaret Barr remembers: Alfred and I were in Paris in ...”

“... perhaps because readers no longer expect books simply to ‘reflect’ reality. Another reason may be that mirrors themselves are no longer convex, as they usually were until the 17th century, so that the word has ceased to carry the attractive promise of a larger reality compressed into a small and manageable compass. One of the most widely read of all ...”

“... span); at the present rate of production – two volumes per half year – the full text should be available by the end of 1981. The editors have decided, partly because of financial considerations, not to append notes or an index to the individual volumes. This contrasts with Grieg’s version, where the racy and ...”

“... to enter occupations – telephone or television repairs, Pacific Gas – which they consider to be ‘hot’ sexually? ‘We’ve reduced the things of the material plane to mere symbolical conveniences,’ said Isherwood in A Single Man. ‘The Europeans hate us because we’ve retired to live inside our advertisements, like hermits going into ...”

“... studies, and it hovers over much of this book. Five of the essays, including a splendid piece by Barbara Everett on epic catalogues, are on Milton. Eliot made a major contribution to the ‘dislodgement’ of Milton, but Milton studies never even faltered. Indeed, important books like Ricks’s Milton’s Grand Style were conceived of as counterblasts to ...”

“... Professor Sir Peter Strawson is properly honoured by the 12 essays written for this anthology. Unlike the papers in some other collections of this kind, most of these are addressed to issues in which Strawson has a serious interest and on which he has done substantial work. It is therefore delightful to find that Philosophical Subjects also contains Strawson’s replies to each of the essays presented to him ...”

“... This is a collection of essays by one of our best literary critics, in fact exactly the kind of thing one would expect from him; it simply continues the good work in the manner of his last two books. Why, then, do the reviewers shy like frightened cab-horses? Because Professor Lodge not only includes about seventy-five pages of ‘structuralism’, but actually uses the word in his title, and suggests that it is possible for an English professor to get along with it ...”

“... War is concerned, we have for long been accustomed to seeing the frailties of the leaders exposed by zealous commentators. Montgomery was too cautious to be able to exploit victory; Churchill was like a schoolboy in his enthusiasm for wild and ill-considered schemes (as when, discovering ...”

“... of establishment blue-stocking. Her best books have been called novels of ideas, but could perhaps be more accurately described as diversions, for the ideas in them are seldom allowed to settle: the genteel humour which guaranteed her popularity in her own day and relative obscurity in ours diverts the novels away from anything too conclusive. Rose Macaulay ...”