“... don’t add up to an explanation of how imitation came to be understood negatively, there may be no explanation to find. Semantic shifts can be as difficult to retrodict as to interpret. But whatever the causes, over the past two centuries or so ‘imitation’ has become mainly pejorative in common usage and marginal in literary criticism. Writers ...”

“... Office’s chief legal adviser. Corps Diplomatique?). According to D.C., ‘although the reader may, on closing the book, ask himself what is the good of it all from a practical point of view, he cannot but admire the extraordinary patience and erudition of Dr Goebel in having gathered together such a mass of interesting historical material.’ But ...”

“... Metaphysics is called Metaphysics Gamma because there are two extant Metaphysics Alphas and (may we suppose) no one could bear to call one of them lesser, so references to the fourth book are given as Metaphysics Gamma (IV) or sometimes Metaphysics IV (3), this being the book where Aristotle outlines three versions of his famous ‘principle of ...”

“... your zone’ event to boost attendance figures; although, despite appearances, the body zone may be less susceptible to anthropomorphism than a crumbly old codex. To adopt a book, call the British Library Development Office on 020 7412 7047, fax 020 7412 7168, e-mail adopt-a-book@bl.uk or visit their website at ...”

“... not something that the Baron himself was ever remotely guilty of so far as I know; a liar he may have been but a heroically implausible one, not even asking to be believed let alone hustled off into hospital. The proxy bit that is now used, if not to fine-tune the diagnosis then at least to confuse it, is potentially rather sinister, implying as it does ...”

“... Especially you who have not made confession Since yesterday, or else these trepidatious Phantoms may flit before your uncleansed presence, Or Cacodaemon with his greasy jowls Gulp you right down and flense your sin-drenched shanks!’ Act Four. A local yokel, The Boy Martyr, Is hauled out to the stake. He knows Lang’s game, But still he’s ...”

“... that it forces us to look at the celebrated through the eyes of the not-so-celebrated. The books may be written about ‘Iris’, but they are always also about ‘John’, who fell in love, fifty years ago, with a girl he saw riding by on a bicycle, and about whom he fantasised, before he even met her, that ‘nothing had ever happened to her: that she was ...”

“... he’s just turned 30 and gets injured rather a lot: a decent 90 mph is about his limit. What he may be, on the other hand, is the author who wins the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize for 2001. Were he to do so, it would re-raise an intriguing question raised in the case of the 2000 prize. This went to Lance Armstrong, the American cyclist who has ...”

“... can probably tell you more about their unconscious minds than their dreams can. But then again, it may just be that in a past life I helped sell rhinos to the ancient Greeks. Martin Amis, whatever he may have been in a past life, is currently turning into Gyles Brandreth. Blazoned across the Daily Telegraph on 13 June were ...”

“... self-humiliation; how it can pleasurably generate the very guilt it seeks to assuage; how it may be a way of provoking as well as avoiding punishment, or of vaunting the self in the act of abnegating it. There is also, if one recalls the young woman at Mass, confession as come-on. All this is alarming stuff for a society which believes that what you see ...”

“... this purpose. This steamy logbook was not published in its entirety until the late 1950s. To these may be added some passages in other published writings by Hazlitt, and some comments by well-informed bystanders, not least the outgoing Mrs Hazlitt, whose journal briskly records their divorce proceedings in Scotland. From these overlapping sources one can ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... structure should, however, offer many points of entry to whatever sections of the Complete Edition may be made available to English readers during the coming years. Like the 1974 anthology, it begins with the ‘Philosophy of Music’ from Geist der Utopie, and ends with a corresponding excerpt from Das Prinzip Hoffnung; between, there is a shorter selection ...”

“... the kind that most of us have to live by. Not Canetti’s great masters, however. Shakespeare may not have wept over King Lear, may indeed have written the play in a passion of relish, but he suffered: the play is a correlative of his total capacity to suffer. That is perhaps self-evident and tautologous. In a climate ...”

“... this on the finale of the C major Quartet, Op. 54, No 2: ‘The work’s most shattering and, if I may so put it, untimely innovation is, of course, the adagio finale, which turns the typical symphonic structure with two allegros upside down, throwing up two adagios instead. History books credit the 19th century with the symphony’s slow final ...”