“... Or are we better advised, as Conor Gearty advised us (LRB, 16 November 1995), not to give more power to ‘unelected, unrepresentative and unaccountable judges’ by weaving the European Human Rights Convention into the fabric of British law, but instead to reform Parliament and the electoral system, and devolve power away from the already ...”

“... volumes of his letters had appeared by 1991, and the publication of Stephen Cooper’s biography more or less completes the picture, at least for the time being. Much of the credit for this must go to Fante’s indefatigable widow, whose stewardship of his reputation has played a very large part in the continuing campaign for his induction into the American ...”

“... an overwhelming, if not quite universal success. But most critics agreed that her performance was more than worthy of her name; and in her first season alone she managed to earn almost triple what her aunt Siddons had done at the peak of her career. The newspapers, by her own account, included almost daily notices of her activities; ...”

“... crime dramas where the killer question is saved until the witness has begun to relax: ‘One more thing, sir. We keep being told about the London Art Market, but we can’t find it. Could you tell us where it is?’ My friend swallowed hard. It became an anecdote. But the policeman’s question, if naive, wasn’t stupid. What, after all, is a ...”

“... with characteristically skilful quotations, the ambivalence that Europeans felt as they became more conscious of the existence of powerful rivals. With Pietro della Valle, struck by the sharp contrast between the hurried movements and prissy status displays of European grandees and the silent dignity of the Turks, or Alessandro Valignano, impressed that ...”

“... company’: a film-maker and accountant were members, along with Rotten – now using his more sober real name, John Lydon – and three other musicians. In October, PiL released their first product, a single called, with corporate thoroughness, ‘Public Image’. It was a streamlined, surging noise that hadn’t been heard before, and reached number ...”

“... so profitably on this topic have a secure or comprehensive understanding of the past – any more than many historians do. Too often the impression has been fostered that empire was a uniquely European invention which became significant only in the last two centuries. That European overseas empires (depending on how one defines them) date back rather to ...”

“... the other, and in Borges we witness the death of the author from the author’s point of view. Or more precisely the lapse of the person into the author, the birth of the textual play actor at the expense of the mere civilian, who becomes nameless, like the historical Perón and Eva once politics and mythology take them up. But again, it’s not exactly fame ...”

“... The experience brought out something reckless in even the most serious. William Hamilton, who did more than anyone to further vulcanology as an academic study, made the ascent during the 1767 eruption in the company of the art historian Johann Winckelmann. They were travelling with the Prussian ambassador to Vienna, who had written a guidebook to Sicily, and ...”

“... Reverdy, who turned this line into a directive that images be born from ‘a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities’. Abrupt encounters – between texts, pictures, things, places and people – became the staple of Surrealist production, including its greatest novels, Nadja and Le Paysan de Paris.Dada was one essential prompt for ...”

“... with a luxuriant blond soup-strainer moustache, a rubicund complexion, a large mouth from which more often than not a pipe protruded, and a hearty disposition.’ Malcolm Muggeridge immediately took to Arthur Ransome when he first met him in Cairo in 1929. Most people did. The philosopher R.G. Collingwood, a close friend from their shared childhood in the ...”

“... trunked and bikinied masses. ‘Britannia Roused, or the Coalition Monsters Destroyed’ by Thomas Rowlandson (1784). In the election of October 1974, Wilson got a bare majority, with 319 seats, but still lacked a clear mandate. Yet the country, it turned out, was less divided than it appeared. In 1975 there was a referendum on continuing membership ...”

“... reflections show the openness of the rationalist to a wider stream of Enlightenment thought, a more capacious conception of mind and cosmos (and the relationship between them) that can be found in thinkers from Isaac Newton and John Locke to Adam Smith and David Hume. What Kind of Creatures Are We? reprints a series of lectures Chomsky delivered at ...”

“... mentions them only in brief asides about Poets’ Corner and a couple of Tudor tombs. And what is more superannuated, more artistically mute and inexpressive, more absurdly camp, than a white marble statue of an old dead dude, surrounded by endless allegorical ladies? How many people have ...”

“... argued that African Americans – ‘especially if we are potential writers’ – may be ‘more than ordinarily concerned’ with the associations their names carry with them.Everett was born in Georgia and raised in South Carolina. He studied with the logician Howard Pospesel at the University of Miami, where he read Frege, Wittgenstein and ...”