“... intimacy is at least worth speculating about. What, for example, is the truth of the legend that James Mill entrusted John Stuart’s political education to Place? Mr Miles does not touch on it. The story told in Iain McCalman’s Radical Underground is told perforce from the outside. There are no personal records to give an inner logic and life to the ...”

“... standard edition of his prose writings, but we now have the full run in a distinguished edition by James Woolley. It is now possible, without visiting rare book libraries, to read the essays of both men in their original context, with their relation to one another in clear view. Sheridan’s (hopelessly inferior) essays help to throw light on Swift’s ...”

“... libertarian, Ayn Rand atheist – ‘a tiny contrapuntal campus movement’, in the words of James Mann in Rise of the Vulcans, whose members were as defiantly countercultural as hippies and peaceniks. Together, white Southern Democrats and self-confessed conservatives shaped the social agenda of conservative Republicanism. The aggressive certainties of ...”

“... of Wisconsin. In his excellent biography Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet (1977), James Atlas describes the eleven-part code of conduct Schwartz drew up for himself and distributed among his fellow students. They were to read a chapter from Aristotle’s Logic every day, as well as half an hour of Spinoza; to ‘use words as translations of ...”

“... idol she has since become. The reputation of E.M. Forster was in decline. The paintings of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were not privately collected and had been demoted to the cellars of many public galleries. The art criticism of Roger Fry and Clive Bell was no longer considered significant, and few people knew the name of Carrington. The best-known of the ...”

“... to universalism. Middle-class critics may be willing, at least in the English-speaking world, to grant that certain contemporary works of fiction which enjoy a low prestige can be called a part of gay literature; but highly praised works, especially works of the past, are labelled ‘classic’ and ‘canonical’. To be sure, all serious works of art hope ...”

“... Sofia Andrukhovych, Neal Ascherson, Ilya Budraitskis, James Butler, Andrew Cockburn, Meehan Crist, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Peter Geoghegan, Jeremy Harding, Owen Hatherley, Abby Innes, Mimi Jiang, Thomas Jones, Laleh Khalili, Jackson Lears, Donald MacKenzie, Thomas Meaney, James Meek, Pankaj Mishra, Azadeh Moaveni, Jan-Werner Müller, Vadim Nikitin, Jacqueline Rose, Jeremy Smith, Daniel Soar, Olena Stiazhkina, Vera Tolz, Daniel Trilling Sofia Andrukhovychtranslated by Uilleam BlackerOn​  the first day, we hid in the Mins’ka metro station with our dog, Zlata ...”

“... of scientists on the EPA’s two advisory boards. Science research lives or dies by the government grant, but under Pruitt no member of an EPA board can receive a grant. His administration weakened rules on coal ash, smog and mercury, and cut back enforcement on toxic chemicals. ‘Pruitt has driven away hundreds of ...”

“... by the former prime minister nor by his publishers’. After​ the brief and futile interlude of James Callaghan’s premiership, a new Tory prime minister entered Downing Street in May 1979. Almost thirty years before, at the 1950 general election, a 24-year-old research chemist by the name of Margaret Roberts had stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. By now ...”

“... polemicist.’ What in fact distinguishes him is that he acts. His polemic, taken alone, would not grant him global prominence. Until he attacked American targets in the late 1990s, most of the Western world ignored him as another crank in a turban. His expulsion to Afghanistan from Sudan in May 1996, at America’s insistence, marked a change in bin Laden’s ...”

“... as Gide liked to say, and we may have to raise some questions when someone like Henry James comes along and offers to codify its new ‘laws’ in doctrines like ‘point of view’. Even though he is virtually absent from this book, for reasons I will come to, Faulkner offered his own useful tripartite formula for what the novelist’s practice ...”

“... contradictions.’ Leaving aside the question of what Moody may mean here by ‘his culture’, to grant Pound heroic status from the outset is unwise. Moody nowhere says that Pound read Thomas Carlyle, but Carlyle’s notion of a church of literature taking the place of the Christian Church, and his emphasis on the importance of ‘The Hero as Poet’ (with ...”

“... years. Awaiting action against the Mexican army in Texas in 1845, the young Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant played Desdemona. With victory over the British came a public debate about whether plays written under a shamefully hierarchical monarchy could be considered fit entertainment for true democrats. ‘Accustomed to see kings, dukes and lords daily on the ...”

“... learn, was fundamentally heterosexual, but willing to comply with the physical demands of Duncan Grant – it was the emotional burden he found insupportable. Despite their subsequent celibacy, Constance and Edward were lovers before they married. Certainly, she was no prude and, via her husband, recommended ‘Malthusian sheaths’ to her son. In fact, she ...”

“... man on the whole, and his first ministry saw the inauguration of National Health, the belated grant of independence for India, the reform of the electoral system and some small inroad on privatised folly in basic service industries. Would anyone from Pimlott to McKibbin to Howard to Ziegler care to mention one – even one – attainment of the Wilson ...”