“... it seems. They reside in Paris in the Musée des lettres et manuscrits, opened in 2004 on the rue de Nesle, relocated (and reopened) in 2010 on the boulevard Saint-Germain. But the presentation of them and the French literary world’s response are cloaked in the piety that now surrounds Proust’s reputation, which does give an air of fiction to the whole ...”

“... tendresses bestiales … Maîtres jongleurs, ils transforment le lieu et les personnes, et usent de la comédie magnétique. Les yeux flambent, le sang chante, les os s’élargissent, les larmes et des filets rouges ruissellent.Chinese, Hottentots, Bohemians, simpletons, hyenas, Molochs, old dementias, sinister demons, they mix popular, maternal numbers ...”

“... his knowledge indispensable to the booming international art trade, which made him a very rich man by the time the second volume of his biography by Ernest Samuels opens in 1903. These relations with dealers, which were either discreet or secret, deepened in subsequent decades, and it should have come as no surprise to Berenson when he returned from ...”

“... Charlie Russel, Otto’s partner, may seem a mere caricature of a ‘movement’ lawyer (‘like Paul Muni’, Otto says, ‘defending the unlovely and unloved’); and certainly, when Charlie shows up on the doorstep late one night, with the face of a Renaissance putto gone to seed, moaning about Otto’s ‘moral failure’ and complaining about his wife ...”

“... and themes which will make enough noise to fill up the silence of the great open spaces. Paul Auster’s Moon Palace is a ‘Western’ novel executed with consummate skill and an unerring feeling for the volume control. His epigraph, from Jules Verne – ‘Nothing can astound an American’ – prepares us for the layers of romantic irony ...”

“... the Andalusi Muslim historian Ibn Bassām recorded a prophecy that had been circulating widely:A man once told me he heard it said … that once upon a time this Peninsula was conquered and taken away from a ruler named Rodrigo, and that another Rodrigo was one day destined to take it back – a prophecy that has filled all hearts with terror, and made men ...”

“... it dealt a ‘decisive blow … to the unhurried “gentlemanly” style of business’, as Edmund de Rothschild put it. Warburg himself later claimed that he disliked the whole episode and would have preferred a friendly deal. But there can be no doubt that the rapid increase of the bank’s business dated from the moment he showed he was able to take on the ...”

“... ritualised way of life. These meanings have held fast for centuries. The French economist Paul Leroy-Beaulieu wrote in 1874 that ‘colonisation is a considered act, subject to rules, which can only originate in highly advanced societies. Savages and barbarians sometimes – even often – emigrate [but] only civilised peoples colonise.’The ...”

“... that guides the artist, then, is not the vain quest for a proper apparel for the soul [une parure de l’âme], it is the métier itself, insisting on goodness, or rather, bringing goodness in its wake.’ clar05_3623 Gallery These are difficult sentences, and my translation works hard (too hard) to make them easier, but their terms came back to me ...”

“... practitioners’. His second aim was to relate Renaissance ideas about architecture to ideas about man, nature and Classical Antiquity, more especially ideas about the mathematical structure of the universe and the analogy between musical and architectural harmony and proportions. Narrower in focus than Pevsner, Wittkower achieved a sharper definition of his ...”

“... Paul Celan​ was born in 1920 and died in 1970. The symmetry of these dates, arranged around the end of the Second World War, seems cruelly freighted, as does the fact that Celan chose to end his life on Hitler’s birthday. Celan – he gave himself the name by inverting the order of the syllables of his original surname, Antschel – grew up in Czernowitz, then part of Romania, now part of Ukraine ...”

“... which is a bit rich, since one might just as easily describe Betjeman as a silly little man with a taste for posh totty; though one wouldn’t, of course. The terms Hillier chooses to describe Betjeman’s relationships are nice little phrases like ‘smitten’, or ‘fell in love with’, which is all very fine and noble – admirable even ...”

“... as a bona fide Surrealist. His second book of poems, published in 1936, was modishly entitled Man’s Life Is This Meat and demonstrated a concerted English attempt to dally in the magnetic Elysian fields of Surrealist art. It included poems to Dali and Tanguy, ‘Charity Week’ inspired by Ernst’s collages in Une Semaine ...”

“... say the least, rather unusual. At that time, Wood wrote about a great comic writer, and I about a man whose best subject was work: shovelling coal, pulping paper, waiting tables, tooting horns, palming basketballs, driving Formula One cars (because music and sport are also work, and he admired everything done with effort and skill). To both of us he was ...”

“... A Senate subcommittee put publishers on the stand: ‘Here is your May issue. This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman’s head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that’s in good taste?’ Fifteen comics companies went out of business in the summer of 1954 alone.Generations of fans have had their revenge. Wertham is ...”