“... These images, which astonished the Surrealists-to-be when they were first shown in Paris in May 1921, provided the basic template for the Surrealist picture, even for painters as visually different as René Magritte. While Surrealist images were sometimes patterned on screen memories, Surrealist objects were often modelled on sexual fetishes, which, in ...”

“... masculine sceptic while Mulder is the feminine believer. (What a man! I would exclaim as I watched David Duchovny in his little swimsuit. What a man!) It is not in the riverine quality of her voice, banked by reeds, sometimes pierced low by waterbirds. It is not even in her partner’s reaction, his one liquid larger pupil, the soft hopeless hope that he turns ...”

“... for 50p, today, though much leggier than they were and possibly French, they are nearer £10.13 May. On our evening walk we are coming slowly along past the bookshop, me with my stick, when a skateboarder detaches himself from a group of lads and comes for us at high speed. We don’t flinch, though he comes perilously close and fast. R. says, quite ...”

“... party, both started out as ‘terrorists’. Begin was behind the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel, which killed nearly a hundred civilians; Shamir planned the 1948 kidnapping and assassination of the UN representative Folke Bernadotte. Yitzhak Rabin, revered among liberal Zionists as a peacemaker, oversaw the deportation of tens of thousands of ...”

“... Brutus’ name from his speech entirely’, Cicero says, before going on to hint that the omission may have had something to do with the fact that Brutus’ mother, Servilia, was sleeping with Caesar. Their relationship led to the rumour (which can’t be true) that Brutus was Caesar’s illegitimate son. Caesar​ began his campaigns in Gaul the following ...”

“... opinions and rather narrow tastes. Nonetheless he was very good at teaching one how to write. He may have been wrong in some of his literary judgments and ignorant in some areas of literature but he was good at getting rid of what was superfluous or phoney in a piece of writing. And he would be very insulting if one came out with some bit of ...”

“... Reducing Error and Influencing Behaviour put it last year, Up to 80 per cent of accidents may be attributed, at least in part, to the acts and omissions of people . . . It is quite wrong to believe that telling people to take more care is the answer to these problems. While it is reasonable to expect people to pay attention and take care at ...”

“... Ehud Barak’s landslide victory in the general election of 17 May marked the beginning of a new era in Israeli politics. The election was critical for the future shape of the country’s chronically divided society as well as for its relations with the Arab world. Under the reformed electoral system, each voter casts two ballots – one for the prime minister and one for the parties to be represented in the 120-seat Knesset ...”

“... of living speech where Walcott employs a refined poetic diction. He is also, as some of this may imply, less pleasurable to read. Sun Poem is nothing if not structured. It has 12 sections, suggestive of an annual cycle, or of the hours between sunrise and dark; seven of these sections correspond to the colours of the rainbow, though in puns that have ...”

“... murderer, Mr Wrong, are sorted out. There’s an Incident at Owl Creek-like ending in which Mary may be executed, or reborn, or returned by time-loop to the novel’s opening situation. Other People, this is to say, does not easily give up its secret – at least not to me. Amis’s cleverness has always been of the kind which makes the clodhopping reader ...”

“... with her grandmother, Picasso offered something she recognised.Gilot moved in with Picasso in May 1946. Soon after they left to spend the summer at Maar’s house in Ménerbes. Gilot had protested – it ‘seemed a strange thing to be doing’ and unpleasant for all involved – but Picasso reasoned that he had bought the house for Maar and so should ...”

“... Brigaders, Trotskyites, Communists, pacifists failed by their tribunals. The playwright David Hare declared recently that working-class conscripts now met ‘the officer class’ for the first time and rebelled; but plenty had met the people issuing orders, at least since Peterloo. Moreover, an Army largely unemployed except in training or retreat ...”

“... in a flashback), and that, at the time she fixed the books to the ceiling, she was mad. This may or may not be plausible, but it absolves the symbolism from too comfortable a resting place in liberal piety. Qatrina had lost her sanity because of what she’d had to do and suffer under the Taliban: accused of ‘living ...”

“... a particular basketball shot in order to fulfil his destiny by saving a group of children. It may be that the literary form best suited to dramatising forks in the road, paths taken and not taken, isn’t the novel at all but the short story, with its particular affinity for turning points. Certainly Roald Dahl’s story ‘Genesis and ...”

“... Donaldson’s self-effacing prose (so un-Jonsonian a quality) and the quietness of his reasoning may occasionally obscure the novelty and penetration of his narrative, there is no missing the surges of power when he tackles hitherto unyielding biographical mysteries. The reasons for Jonson’s journey to Scotland are one such high point, his appearance ...”