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“... middle. The gist of it was written down when Valéry was 21, maybe a jeune parque, but certainly a young prig. ‘The crisis came at Genoa, on a stormy night in August 1892,’ according to Jackson Mathews, an earlier translator, reverential to the point of a kind of co-preciosity. Later Valéry added wings and staircases and buttresses; none of it, so far as ...”

“... him, escape from the current crisis required a crime larger than he was able to commit.’ A young woman decides that feminists can wear make-up: ‘She created herself daily, and did not want to know – or others to know, for that matter – what murky truths lay behind her finery. That by disguising these smaller truths she was merely uncovering ...”

“... keepers of the flame, while pocketing the revenue for the estate, have no intention of satisfying. Michael Millgate has – quite fortuitously – written a book on exactly the same subject as Ian Hamilton, using the same case-study method. Whereas Hamilton burned his fingers trying to steal Salinger’s flame, Millgate – Hardy’s biographer and the editor ...”

“... him).Brando was right, judging by the 2004 movie version of The Merchant of Venice, directed by Michael Radford. The film itself is a pedestrian and pretty adaptation that can’t quite decide where it stands on the antisemitism of the main characters, but Pacino is an excellent Shylock, emphasising the character’s furious dignity in the face of ...”

“... desperate need for health services, not least to deal with sexually transmitted illness among the young and poor, there is no shortage of breast implants, liposuction and hymen restoration costing upwards of US $400, in a society where the basic wage is around $160 a month. Of course, as with back-alley abortions, there are aesthetic surgeons who work for as ...”

“... plotting between Intelligence agencies looks real, and all the rest looks like fantasy. Like the young Michael Innes, Sarah Caudwell both respects and flouts the conventions of the detective story. Thus was Adonis murdered is a very modern novel using the archaic epistolary method of Clarissa: aptly enough, because it has as much to do with seduction as ...”

“... father. On Capri he was to see himself as Byron, D.H. Lawrence as Shelley and Francis Brett Young as a more retiring kind of Keats. And Lawrence was fascinated by him, found him sympathetic and good company, and made him the model in his story called ‘The man who loved islands’. The story could just as well be about Lawrence himself, and shows the ...”

“... violence – brought into every home by television – on the picket-lines, where hordes of tough young miners and uniformed policemen sway and grapple in physical combat like Medieval armies. There is the uneasiness about the accountability of the Police. There are the guerrilla raids at night, presumably by striking miners, which leave a trail of damage and ...”

“... among others, Helen of Troy, Narcissus, the Pythia, the serpent from Genesis, an angel and the young Parque herself. James Lawler speaks of the ‘opera’ that is playing in La Jeune Parque, and this is a good metaphor for the tone and population of the other poems too. There are singers, who take on roles, a composer and a conductor, all doing their own ...”

“... The story opens on a picture of a very large young lady, ‘a truly massive young person’, crossing from one house to another in Newport, Rhode Island, site of ‘florid’ villas and other structures ‘smothered in senseless architectural ornament’. On the verandah of the second house she finds her father, an inordinately rich man, sourly awaiting the death of his former partner, a slightly less rich man ...”

“... Has he betrayed his office by breaking confidence and revealing the backstage manoeuvres of Michael Foot and others? Yes, but the revelations are of interest in that they indicate a secret system. Whether they are accurate is another question, of more interest to Mr Foot and his friends than it is to the rest of us. The most amusing revelation of all ...”

“... rules governing marriage licences; all those guessing games about how, when and where young William got out of the glove-making and wool-dealing business and into the theatre – and allows Shapiro to get straight to the much more interesting question, often skimped in such books, of what Shakespeare’s working life, the bit that made him ...”

“... full five pages, quite early on in the Elements, and it does harmonise in a striking way with the young career of George Drysdale, as unearthed by Mrs Benn. The ‘case’ is ‘a young man about fifteen years of age, of active, studious and erotic disposition’, a star pupil at his school, who had been much troubled by ...”

“... The idea of using a corpse to plant false clues lodged itself in the imagination of a young naval intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. In the first month of the war, Fleming and his chief at naval intelligence, Admiral Godfrey, compiled a list of possible deceptions they called the ‘Trout Memo’. Some of its playful ruses ...”

“... As he looks forward to his 70th birthday Sir Michael Howard can also look back over a distinguished career which began with Wellington, Christ Church and the Coldstream Guards. In 1943, as Lieutenant Howard, fresh from the University, he led his platoon in a dangerous uphill charge against a German position north of Salerno ...”