“... to forget. The translation is Forrest Gander’s, in The Essential Neruda. Isla Negra (neither black nor an island, Enrico Mario Santí reminds us in an afterword to Alastair Reid’s translation) is the name of the village where Neruda bought a house in 1939, and where he spent much of his writing time. The book named for the village was first published ...”

“... of the book, and it makes constant capital-lettered appearances, from the episode in which a Black Mamba is loose on the boat that brings Cheeta to America to dancer Tosca Roulien getting knocked down by John Huston’s car. According to Cheeta, and he should know, the contradictions in human feelings about Death appear most vividly in our paradoxical ...”

“... local powers and odd, un-Roman ways of doing things. In Anatolia, the Pyrenees, the Vosges and the Black Forest, the Welsh marches and Yorkshire moors, archaeology and the occasional literary source show us patterns of settlement and society that no longer look towards, or even acknowledge the existence of an imperial centre, as they had done 50 years ...”

“... the Russians do, or love it as the Americans do. But we found our own fear: the scrabbling of the black bear’s claws at the screen door, the creaking silence of the woods, the cold. In Europe it is the hand of human labour, the millennial arts of settlement and civilisation, which awaken awe. In Canada, the hands have done so little. Instead, there is the ...”

“... a photograph of Uncle Alyosha sitting straight-backed, legs akimbo, red stars on his collar, his black boots glistening, his hands folded over a sword resting on his knee. He holds his chin stiffly erect and he has exactly the same thin amused smile, the same superbly assured carriage as in the photograph we have of him as a Chevalier Guards’ officer at ...”

“... American political exiles in the Seventies, beached in Algiers, like Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers, and in Switzerland, like Leary. He always seemed to be able to afford champagne and skis. There is also no doubt of his despair, particularly after the failure of his second marriage, exhausted by seven years of flight and harassment. And things ...”

“... side of the space, it turned out that these figures were not as dead as the young male corpse in black, set apart from the others, might have feared or hoped. Selectively revived in turns by a sort of black mass (performed by a coven of witches evidently visiting from Dunsinane), the cast of Hamlet were compelled once more ...”

“... of galoshes; they had wandered into the hip-bath. All of them were in the same format, wrapped in black binding like battle-armour, sullen and aggressive. The walls were resplendent, decked with cards printed in coloured lettering that irradiated harsh verses from Scripture, stern moral counsels, cries from the psalms, insolent threats of hell-fire. And in ...”

“... to be fed up with the Democrats’ inability to get bills through Congress.In What It Took to Win, Michael Kazin traces the history over the past two centuries of what he calls ‘the oldest mass party in the world’. Kazin has been engaged with Democratic politics since 1960, when, at the age of twelve, he sported a large campaign button for John ...”

“... offices without appointments, leaving my book like a cuckoo laying eggs. In one office a friendly black receptionist gave me a copy of Caroline Blackwood’s account of the Duchess of Windsor and her French lawyer, Maître Blum. The girl dismissed my interest in a history of the Harlem Renaissance, repeating how much she loved the book on the Duchess. I read ...”

“... the Elder struck political gold during the 1988 Presidential campaign by castigating his opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a liberal, virtually no American politician will voluntarily accept the label. One unlikely exception is Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s new billionaire Republican Mayor, who during the campaign ...”

“... an artificial vagina. But this was one procedure no one dared attempt.The 11th-century philosopher Michael Psellus anticipated contemporary thought in treating gender as a spectrum rather than a binary. Here Betancourt’s close attention to the nuances of Greek literary language pays off. Psellus claimed to have a compassionate, deeply emotional – and ...”

“... invested in the War Loan, to protect their finances against any postwar Labour government. As Michael Smith describes, these problems were exacerbated by the budget cuts which followed the end of hostilities. In 1919, MI5’s annual grant dropped from £100,000 to £30,000, forcing it into unsavoury alliances with the political Right. It recruited Maxwell ...”

“... is cut out in proof. Connors, like his editor, is probably more interested in Edwina, the gorgeous black model who answers his contact advertisement for people who have been struck by lightning. Edwina not only agrees to Connors’s request to have her photograph taken, but graciously offers to take him home for a back rub. Edwina apart, the other people who ...”

“... young Alfred grew up: the alcoholism, madness and opium addiction. Under this family regime of ‘black-bloodedness’ (a term which Charles Tennyson popularised) ‘the boyish self-confidence disappeared and Alfred became subject to those moods of self-torment and remorse which are not uncommon in boys of sensitive nature.’ Happily in later life, the poet ...”