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“... of ordinary language developed by the Oxford School of Philosophers’ – especially, one may add, by John Austin. Unfortunately Dr Harré finds it necessary to develop his thesis by the use of language that is very far from ordinary. Those who are not familiar with the jargons of philosophy and sociology will find it hard to follow. Nevertheless, for ...”

“... presented, often without the storyteller or audience being fully aware of the process. The result may be that the narrative diverts attention from the substance of what we are being told: we need to be careful not to confuse the forms of verisimilitude with the insights we are apparently being given. Now in his mid-thirties, Jason Burke has reported for the ...”

“... in a bucket, caught in deed As in essence by shapes of ourselves, Our sounds the only bargains we may plead. So starts this solipsistic essay about words, Its first stanza chasing its own tail, Since no word will betray another word In this sodality, self-repressing and male, And we discover, hardly believing our eyes And ears, a sort of chromatic scale, That ...”

“... not always tear off the roll neatly and is a little coarse, though we quickly got used to that and may even come to like it. In any case, I would rather suffer a slight discomfort than be complicit in the felling of old-growth trees in Canadian boreal forests merely in order to enjoy virgin toilet paper that is softer and tears more neatly. I also appreciate ...”

“... letters, therefore, are over-determined in their revelatory banality. The intimacies of others may be embarrassing, but they can never be entirely uninteresting. They put us in mind of our own secret memories; we measure our experience against theirs. And if the sentiments ring true, we steal the words. The fact that such letters have a stated target ...”

“... period which was his theme. There are apparent strains and tensions and unevennesses in it, which may be partly because different passages were composed in different phases of the author’s thinking and existence. But after many decades of scholarly activity, there is still no agreement about the genesis of Thucydides’s history. No wonder. The work does ...”

“... Because it’s there’ may be sufficient motive for the intrepid, but many are disheartened by the laborious hours needed to reach a position even to attempt an assault on Finnegans Wake. For such timid aspirants and for those in the early stages of fascination, Roland McHugh’s book, presenting information gathered by earlier explorers (including himself), will save months of preparatory toil ...”

“... arithmetic to put beside deep grammar, or proof that similar needs elicit similar responses. It may again be a sampling artefact. Crump laments that descriptive linguists as well as ethnographers often skimp the number system. The reader notices that the same handful of names recur: the Kpelle of Liberia, the ’Are ’Are of the Solomon Islands, the ...”

“... authoritative fretfulness has been part of the problem for would-be MacNeice biographers: they may have felt that the territory had already been well-mapped by its original proprietor. They may also have feared, from consulting the one or two memoirs put out by MacNeice’s acquaintances, that there was too daunting a ...”

“... and Pietà are, I think one must agree, clearly intended to suggest large erections, which may have been intended to symbolise Resurrection. The purpose of these displays, it is conjectured, was to celebrate the Incarnation – though Steinberg prefers the obsolete term ‘humanation’. God became an entire man, and therefore a sexual being; his ...”

“... fear, it seems, is the demise of grammar. Your children are not taught grammar in schools. They may be taught to express themselves, but they are not taught to express themselves properly – that is, grammatically. Such wounding encounters have flustered me in the past, but now I shall be able to refer my accusers to Sidney Greenbaum’s Good English and ...”

“... an operation which had more to be said for it at that time than in the changed circumstances of May 1940. The British tamely accepted French plans which they were subsequently to blame for the disaster. Moreover, few British officers expressed any doubts about the efficiency and fighting spirit of the French Army, though many were to claim wisdom after the ...”

“... of legal thought; but the argument of Jonathan Sumption’s 2019 Reith Lectures, delivered in May and June and now issued in book form, is more accommodating. It is that while law and due process have their place, they owe considerably more respect to the political process than the UK’s courts have been displaying in recent times. When Sumption was ...”

“... ceasefires brokered by the Iranians. At this point the Iraqi army moved in without US help. Maliki may not have won the decisive military victory he claimed, but at the end of the fighting his government looked stronger than ever. The key question is whether the government’s success will be lasting. Again and again over the last five years the US and its ...”

“... is a rule of law,’ Justice Berkeley said, ‘and a rule of government, and things that may not be done by the rule of law may be done by the rule of government.’ It took the rest of the 17th century – a civil war, the king’s execution, the implosion of the republic, the restoration of the monarchy and the ...”