“... What, we may ask, is greatness anyway? Who in the West this century has shown it? Does it only flourish when nurtured by the ecstatic opiates of war? Greatness, in this context, is what people recognise as greatness: manifest success on a national rather than a purely partisan scale. Losing both wars hasn’t helped Germany’s candidates: Clemenceau eclipses both Hindenburg and Ludendorff ...”

“... if not the imagination of lay commentators on language, then their bile; most of them, though they may not know it, are diehard diachronicists, for whom etymology is also explanation. They are oblivious to what Saussure has to say about ‘values and co-existing terms’. The values of words are not the same as their meanings, although it is not always easy to ...”

“... to cover. But it also indicates the renewed marginalisation of architects in urban planning. It may seem otherwise. Do stars like Rogers not bestride the world, presiding over the layout of city extensions, airports and grands projets? Have Paris and Barcelona, to name but two, not earned income as well as prestige from a monumentled policy of ...”

“... not diminish after a hundred encounters. It is the sort of piece which establishes that, while it may be open to question whether Picasso is this century’s greatest painter, he is undoubtedly its greatest sculptor. The late style surely emerges in October 1964 with works such as the two large paintings of The Artist and his Model dated 25 October and 26 ...”

“... English-speaking world Kubla and Xanadu will stand for ever as symbols of Oriental splendour. It may be that Khubilai and the last emperor are more accessible to us than most of their kind since both were themselves non-Chinese, and both formed friendships with Westerners, so that descriptions of their personalities through European eyes survive. But Marco ...”

“... on the surface. Evelyn Waugh said he was ‘exquisitely entertaining’, but this is ambiguous: he may have meant that Russell was a figure of fun, like William Boot. When Russell died in 1947 he was described in the Times as ‘that most endearing of Somerset farmers’ – the best tribute they could come up with. Russell was ever a countryman, proud of his ...”

“... particles, but not one that has been so well recognised by Nobel prizes.’ The Nobel prizes may be delayed for a while because the ‘discovery’ is far from secure. For a start, some have argued that String Theory, currently popular as a Theory of Everything, would ‘smear out’ any singularity. (Hawking notes this, but has a distaste for String ...”

“... the other the valuable initial glow of creation. Between the two most writers oscillate; some may incline more towards the Shelleyan idea, others more to Horace’s labor limae. But most know that both the delight of the donnée and the less joyous pleasures of revision actually work together. Valéry thought poorly of the initial flourish, what you were ...”

“... to go to England should the rebellion be successful). Many Jacobites had followed them and some may have ‘pined by Arno’ for their ‘lovelier Tees’ – though that was just Macaulay’s Whiggish gloss. Several seem to have settled down quite happily in the milder climate. But the diplomats were kept busy by the rumours of plots and ...”

“... won the Prix Goncourt in 1992, to see whether a shanty town of that name really exists. The novel may be a lush documentary or it may be a historical romance: we can’t be sure. In any case, it is likely to change the way we think about the lives and circumstances of millions of people living on the periphery of large ...”

“... chief delight, Drowned in teares to mourne my losse I stand the bitter night In my window, where I may see Before the windes how the cloudes flee. Lo what a mariner love hath made me! As others embrace, she looks out of the window, a mariner just in a poetic conceit. Surrey is the only early Tudor poet to explore this form of feminine pathos – waiting and ...”

“... The two great hopes of this new breed, Cem and Dervis, would not join forces, for reasons that may never become clear. Cem headed out into the wilderness with a small new fringe party; Dervis joined the CHP (Republican People’s Party), a social democrat grouping descended from the party of Atatürk, one of the last remnants of Turkey’s secular ...”

“... point out that the Greek word philosophia does not imply actual possession of great truths, which may be beyond us anyway, but only an uneasy longing for them, such as stirs occasionally in us all. But whether or not philosophy was a universal aspiration, Diogenes recognised only one genuine philosophical tradition. ‘It was from the Greeks that philosophy ...”

“... and no less than the Scottish equivalent of an equally penniless Devonian such as Ralegh. But one may be more sensitive to these nuances north of the Tweed. More serious, perhaps, is the omission of any reference to the most important Ralegh discovery in recent years, Mark Nicholls’s publication in 1995 of the prosecution summary of the evidence in the Main ...”

“... and passes over quickly, is looked upon with greater feelings of terror than the disease which may be more fatal, but more common. The words of another Scottish MOH, Alexander MacGregor of Glasgow, illustrate why this perception was wrong for measles: ‘In 1907-08 it gave notice of its presence by appearing on the outskirts of the city in the ...”