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“... values. John Winthrop urged the first generation of Puritan settlers to build a ‘City upon a Hill’, yet as they struggled to survive one freezing winter after another, their thoughts turned to the rumoured ‘magnificence’ of an already existing New World metropolis – Americana Mexicana – so advanced it boasted ‘1500 coaches drawn with ...”

“... cover of the most substantial collection, Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed, edited by Paul Cronin, somehow contrives (it’s not Photoshopped) to pair an implacable-looking Herzog with a grizzly bear standing on its hind legs, jaws agape. Be, if not afraid, then just a little abashed. In the preface to the 2014 edition of the Guide, Cronin ...”

“... us, we have never acquired the adult mind.’ 18 February. Ned Sherrin’s memorial service at St Paul’s, Covent Garden. A friendly service interspersed with songs, some from Sondheim, some from Sherrin and Brahms, but with none of them as tuneful as the hymns. The audience is very responsive, and it’s the only occasion in my experience that the lesson ...”

“... was a roar from the road below and the squeak of tank tracks. A column of Warriors clanked up the hill. The Warrior is a strong fighting vehicle. It can protect a team of soldiers as it carries them into battle. Bullets bounce off it. A single inch-thick shell from its cannon can do terrible damage to anything unarmoured it hits. But these Warriors looked ...”

“... is sinking behind me. The fields are in shadow but, out in front, is a little shining city on a hill. All the west-facing glass catches the light. I am on my way to meet the Ulster Unionist chairman of the local council, who lives next door to my friend Steve. The chairman is a gaunt man with a heavy moustache that gives him a doleful, hangdog look. He ...”

“... In Irish poetry, from Ó Rathaille to the rebel songs, a paradigmatic encounter recurs. Up on a hill, or down by the glenside, the poet meets a woman who celebrates Ireland’s pastand speaks of national redemption. This emblematic figure, often glimpsed in a vision or ‘aisling’, can be a glamorous maiden awaiting her Stuart prince, but she also appears as the ‘poor old woman’ of the patriotic ballads ...”

“... loved, as his several ventures into poetry confirm: Low lies their home ’mongst many a hill, In fruitful and deep delved womb; A little village, safe, and still, Where pain and vice full seldom come, Not horrid noise of warlike drum. Shepherds who pipe on about their loves and their sheep and lead lives magically in tune with an idyllic and ...”

“... were in cahoots, Belloc added a layer of antisemitism. Like his hero the writer and politician Paul Déroulède, Belloc felt France had been unbearably shamed by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and wanted revenge against the compromisers and financial interests that had undermined army morale. A thoroughgoing anti-Dreyfusard, he merged conspiracy theories ...”

“... the insular world of SF could give, but recognition from outside kept growing, especially after Paul Williams’s 1975 profile in Rolling Stone. Dick’s final years – less prolific but by no means sterile – brought attempts to explain ‘2-3-74’, in essays, in the more careful prose of the last novels and in the mammoth, unpublishable ...”

“... labelled himself. But he could have escaped the legend to which he had devoted such energies. As Paul Ferris’s excellent biography established some time back, while Thomas was certainly in a bad way, his death was down to a medical blunder. He wasn’t martyred by the barbarians of the Inland Revenue: by the time he died Thomas was on the verge of being ...”

“... projects. But they do help to explain why Nepalese manufacturers have been so unsuccessful, why hill agriculture is withering, why Nepal is a minor dumping-ground for medical drugs, drinks and tourists. It is an incomplete explanation, which does not take the international politico-economic context of Nepal into account. Thirdly, there are the social and ...”

“... the $100 spanner, or the $1000 toilet seat, or about having an Assistant Secretary of Defense (Paul Thayer) in jail – these are the mere ephemera of an administration utterly devoted to pouring hundreds of billions of dollars towards Lockheed, Boeing, Rockwell, General Dynamics, Martin Marietta and so on. Even though there’s no money to pay for ...”

“... in the tenth century to explain the incredibly complicated history of a piece of land at Font-hill in Wiltshire. This has already been decided, he protests. We took it to your father, King Alfred: ‘And the king stood in the chamber at Wardour – he was washing his hands. And when he had finished, he asked Aethelhelm why what we had decided did not seem ...”

“... a while emotionally oppressive, and book a flight to San Francisco, really just so as to see a hill. True, there is a northern area called the Heights, which sounds as if it ought to be the Hampstead of Houston, but the altitude in question turns out to be a mere 23 feet: not enough to notice, at least until a tropical storm comes in and the rest of the ...”

“... Discarded alternatives are seen, in rapid flashes of irony. There are several glimpses of Paul von Joukowsky’s 1882 design for the Grail Temple; and although Syberberg’s Gurnemanz is evidently in his thirties, Kundry is at one point seen contemplating a sacra-like bundle of old puppets – one of them very like Emil Scaria’s original ...”