“... times, so I can’t be sure – and it’s possible that the show relies on nobody’s watching it more than a couple of times – but I hope that the list is completely new each week. Which might make you wonder how the writers managed to come up with quite so many tedious subjects. Did they lurk about in pubs and restaurants, taking notes on the dreary ...”

“... clever thing of appropriating an opponent’s discourse: the Canadian triffid is an ironic (and more modern) riposte to all the talk about Frankenstein foods and the like. Anyone looking for a good reason to distrust genetic science, however, need look no further than Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable. It’s not published till November, but ...”

“... hate Tolstoy. He provokes a deep enmity in me. He loved Anna but could hardly have killed her off more coldly.’ And it’s certainly the case that the executing train in her version – the drawings are by Valery Kachaev and Igor Sapozhkov – has the name ‘Lev Tolstoy’ embossed on its engine. One reason for the cartoon’s chilly critical reception in ...”

“... in 1988. Springsteen, co-opting a slogan of Nancy Reagan’s, just said no. Now the Boss is doing more than merely refusing Republicans: he’s gone so far as to offer his support to John Kerry. Other ageing rockers joining him on the Vote for Change tour of battleground states include R.E.M., James Taylor and Jackson Browne, with the Dixie Chicks – whose ...”

“... the workshop made such an inestimable contribution, on the other hand, are being resurrected in more corporeal form. Dr Who has returned to the small screen, after a 15-year absence, with Christopher Eccleston – a huge improvement on the Doctor’s last four incarnations (in reverse order: Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Peter Davison), though ...”

“... Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, J.G. Ballard and Hunter S. Thompson: in other words, men. He says more than once that he’s less interested in typewriters as machines (once upon a time the word also referred to the people, usually women, who used the machines) than in typewriting as discourse. But this is typewriting as it appeals to geeks who like guns: all ...”

“... vanish from the title pages. The earliest, weightiest defence of the book came from Thomas Macaulay: his counterblast to Croker in the Whig Edinburgh Review was written to settle a private score, but he was sincere in his admiration. He found in the diary the same qualities of observation that in 1778 had made Evelina, in his view, the first ...”

“... hated Prussian militarism and loved naked women. What distinguishes his drawings from the more dogmatic anti-militarists is the wheezing black thrill and delirious triumph he takes in depicting the madness around him – the sheer fecundity of his misanthropy. ‘People are swine’ was the closest thing Grosz had to a motto (until he replaced it in ...”

“... are not the observations of a writer who trusts his instincts, still less his reason. They are more like the carefully sifted, windswept relics of a dried-up saint. In these diaries Coetzee creates the sense of remove of a classical work. The romantics force their genius on you like a coat, and get you to wear it; the classical writer takes you by the hand ...”

“... No.1 Bestseller’: ‘Second only to P.D. James in the run up to Christmas’ deserving more respect, of a certain kind anyway, than ‘No. 1 at a quiet time of year’. I say P.D. James rather than J.K. Rowling because the precocious Potter has been banned from ‘fiction’ for being both underage and too successful, although I’d have thought ...”

“... lab. The biodefence budget would be better spent, Klotz and Sylvester argue, preparing for more likely and more deadly epidemics: bird flu, for example. They’re upbeat about the prospects for a more rational biodefence programme under Obama. Their determination to be as positive ...”

“... ways, are founded on what we experience when we frequent wild country – sometimes virgin, more often partially domesticated. We leave our prints on it, our tracks, and used by generations these become a track, a trail, a trod, a path, a highway. Ever since my memory began I have followed such tracks with foot and eye: the stony, grassy drove roads ...”

“... Donne’s greatness as axiomatic. I still enjoy much of Donne much of the time, but will grant more readily that Dryden and Johnson had a point: conspicuous cleverness is not always a good thing. It can go too far, and seem merely frivolous. There are moments, subjects and genres where it feels out of place. The usual advice – read a poet’s best ...”

“... a lack of any kind of respect for achievement and status.’ As if his status made it more rather than less acceptable for him to borrow money from Geoffrey Robinson without declaring it, or to put in a word at the Home Office to help Srichand Hinduja get a passport. Readers might be forgiven at times for thinking that a ...”

“... the rules of how a certain kind of movie should be made, and are sure to delight the crowds even more. For the sequels to live up to The Matrix will be difficult, and it’s small wonder that both were filmed together, part three to be released in November: to be that different three times in a row would surely be impossible – just look what happened to ...”