“... looking for something interesting to investigate, though that is not wholly irrelevant. It may be true that too much has been written and published about him, but it is also true that there is a lot to write about. At the same time, however, the poet’s life, and especially the first half of it, has been examined with a persistence that is beginning ...”

“... the incongruity, since the form of the word suggests a diminutive (which according to the OED it may etymologically have been). The comedy of bigness and littleness explodes into the baroque extravaganza of the final tableau, with the monarch’s immolation on a blazing pyre of compulsive and polymorphous copulation: Here, glowing C– –t, with flaming ...”

“... But this is no longer necessarily true, as has been pointed out in these pages before now: there may be more people living now than all the people who have ever died. With over 5.4 billion of us alive today, on course to become 8.5 billion by 2025, we must think of the outnumbering dead as outnumbered – at least until population slows (at perhaps ten ...”

“... there has been a considerable volume of litigation in relation to closed material. Be that as it may, the Strasbourg court’s comment provided the inspiration for legislation in this country, and, in 1997 the Special Immigration Appeals Commission or SIAC was created to hear appeals in immigration or deportation cases where evidence is involved whose ...”

“... respected judge in this way. But is it wise to tie up senior judicial figures in inquiries that may take years to conclude and which are not guaranteed to produce any government response (or which produce only a partial government response) even when their reports emerge? Is it not the job of the Civil Service rather than the judiciary to produce policy ...”

“... foreign immigrants recently started drying up too, and those megapolises are now shrinking. London may be about to go the same way.I first arrived in St Albans one fine afternoon in late September. The schools were coming out. The boys and girls in their neat uniforms looked happy: black, Asian and white children laughing and chatting together. But a ...”

“... 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 ...”