“... cinematic speed.‘We Russians have two countries,’ Dostoevsky wrote in an essay on the death of George Sand: ‘Our Russia and Europe, even when we call ourselves Slavophiles.’ Nabokov thought a sentimental and reactionary vision of Russia won out too often in Dostoevsky’s work, or perhaps he meant to suggest only that too many readers celebrated the ...”

“... succession is the mark of Tolstoy’s peculiar sensibility.’ The ground shifts for Galdós and George Eliot. In Galdós we witness ‘a deterioration of protagonicity’, whereby the major characters become minor ones, pointing us towards a ‘historiographic context in which … such individualism [the kind that called for major characters and fatidic ...”

“... acute suicidal impulses. The sorry creature described here is, alas, a book reviewer, as seen by George Orwell in 1946, the year in which illness and a sense of imminent prosperity forced, or allowed, him to cut down on his own burdensome reviewing chores. Orwell’s portrayal, called ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’, goes on for three lengthy ...”

“... also by coincidence, a study of a single royal event. This was Mass-Observation’s study of King George VI’s coronation in 1937 – May 12. Two hundred ‘observers’ were posted about the country and instructed to note what they observed: with the exception of those who kept a record of what they themselves felt, they were not to intrude or act as ...”

“... Because the man himself is so ungainly, it is easy to overlook Michael Moore’s voice. Where his body seems ungovernable and a source of embarrassment to him – he often can’t bear to watch himself on screen – his voice is confident, almost suave. There’s a moment in his least known movie, The Big One (1997), where he launches effortlessly into a gravelly imitation of Dylan singing ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ before reverting, with a chuckle, to his own spoken voice ...”

“... and Ravanelli, Middlesbrough star-names had been names from the distant past: Wilf Mannion, George Hard-wick, Brian Clough. For a brief period in the mid-Seventies, under Jackie Charlton, the team looked as if it might be going places, but not for very long. Players like Graeme Souness, Bobby Murdoch and David Armstrong got them to the sixth round of ...”

“... for a formal portrait. We hear of the florid complexions and the addiction to alcohol of John George of Saxony and Christian IV of Denmark, of the ‘mouse-coloured hair’ and shrill voice of the Elector Maximilian of Bavaria, of the habitual kneeling and hunting of the Emperor Ferdinand II, of the royal bearing of Gustav Adolf of Sweden, and the ...”

“... at best a minor or compromised one. It seems that the idea for this book came from a passage in George Steiner’s study of language and translation, After Babel – itself an intellectual adventure in the grand old conquistadorial manner. Steiner deplored the fact that, whereas a good many literary creators have left documentation, in the form of notes and ...”

“... I too​ was ‘a single man’ in the fall of 1999. And like the doomed protagonist, George, in the novel A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, I too was gay; I too was an English professor (on a one-term sabbatical back then); I too was middle-aged (at 39 years old then, whereas George is 58); I too was living in Los Angeles (although my teaching position is in Iowa City); I too was heartbroken (whereas George has just lost a long-term but considerably younger lover in a car accident, I’d lost my only somewhat younger lover in a break-up ...”

“... quantity, and more for observation than vision. But in 1927, 45 years after Trollope’s death, Michael Sadleir published a reassessment. He argued that Trollope was a writer with the rare gift of being able to produce memorable books without writing memorable sentences, and probe depths without seeming to move beyond the surface. Interest revived; the ...”

“... states in most campaigns to win the Democrat and Republican nominations. It’s in Iowa that George McGovern emerged as the surprise Democrat candidate in 1972; here that Jimmy Carter, an obscure former one-term governor of Georgia, campaigned almost in secret and ended up in the White House. I come across voters here who have met four or five ...”

“... records the birthdays of various contemporary literary figures. Here is Dennis Potter on 17 May, Michael Frayn on 8 September, Edna O’Brien on 15 December, and so naturally I turn to my own birthday. May 9 is blank except for the note: ‘The first British self-service launderette is opened on Queensway, London 1949.’4 January. ...”

“... had ceased to exist long ago. Not at all. Mrs Thatcher wants to create eight or nine more peers. Michael Foot, as a final gesture of leadership, wants to create 29. What can be the explanation of this extraordinary demand? Once upon a time the Leader of the Labour movement was solid against the House of Lords. Can you imagine Keir Hardie as a peer? When ...”

“... is complaining that the government is ‘too relaxed’, and looks back to ‘the glorious time of George II and Pitt’s administration’. He sounds every inch the infuriated shopkeeper, appalled at every assault on property. ‘He saw the city not just as a place to live in or to make money,’ Sandhu claims, ‘but as a set of values, a tone of ...”

“... In ‘The Building of the Skyscraper’, a short poem which appeared in the Nation in 1964, George Oppen wrote: The steel worker on the girder Learned not to look down, and does his work And there are words we have learned Not to look at, Not to look for substance Below them. But we are on the verge Of vertigo. It’s hard to tell from this poem, published when Oppen was in his mid-fifties, or from any of his poems, what words he was thinking of ...”