“... it exists in itself.’ As for the ‘Figure’, that plays a role, for example, in Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, where the status of geometry poses problems for Deleuze in his attempt to find a contrast in Spinoza between the ‘abstract’ and the ‘fictitious’. The Figure clearly belongs to the order of abstraction, to ‘beings of reason’, yet ...”

“... another said. ‘Can’t do that,’ I responded, ‘because I’m pretty sure I would die while reading it, and that would be another victim for 9/11.’ Taste and tact had departed hand in hand; I had been reading too much John Hoyer Updike. In a 1997 review for the New York Observer, the recently kinged David Foster ...”

“... Why do people read a biography of Shakespeare? Either as a substitute for or as a supplement to a reading of his work. I may read about Byron or Orton because the life itself is both well-documented and well worth watching; but Shakespeare’s life is neither. How he behaved, what he endured, who he knew, where he went – such information does not expand or deepen my grasp of human possibility, as in their different ways the history of Thomas More or John Milton does ...”

“... as women’s problems, addressing – to use Jonathan Culler’s terms – the issue of ‘reading as a woman’ but assuming that ‘reading as a man’ requires no attention. As a result, much male feminist criticism has inadvertently reproduced patriarchal attitudes to women, appropriating or challenging the ...”

“... was a fairly junior member of the Telegraph’s staff for some years. As the author of the ‘Peter Simple’ column for thirty-odd years, Wharton must be regarded as immortal. As far as I know, I never met either, although I may have swapped punches or half-pints with one or other in the mid-Fifties, when I was one of the Daily Express interlopers in the ...”

“... to make more sense for her ‘novel’ means reorganising time. In one way she is setting up the reading of the book as a roman à clef, or throwing a cloak of visibility over her fictional characters, who we should suppose ghostlike, unnamed, not creatures of flesh and blood. It is not the third volume of her autobiography although I can’t remember anyone ...”

“... Professor Sir Peter Strawson is properly honoured by the 12 essays written for this anthology. Unlike the papers in some other collections of this kind, most of these are addressed to issues in which Strawson has a serious interest and on which he has done substantial work. It is therefore delightful to find that Philosophical Subjects also contains Strawson’s replies to each of the essays presented to him ...”

“... of all’, however, proves to be a mistranscription of the original article: the proof-reading throughout is slovenly – ironically in a book which repeatedly comments on the punishingly high standards Britten always set himself. It is certain that the rest of the contributors, highly intelligent people including some of the world’s greatest ...”

“... currently experiencing a major crisis of confidence and it is to this unhealthy condition that Re-Reading English is addressed. The contributors are collectively of the opinion that English literature is a dying subject and they argue that it can be revived by adopting a ‘socialist pedagogy’ and introducing into the syllabus ‘other forms of writing and ...”

“... about the author of Lucky Jim, if that still engaging novel is all one recalls of Amis, but reading or rereading a wider selection of his work alongside Leader’s sympathetic yet unsparing biography has driven me to brood not just on the relation between Amis the comic novelist and Amis the serial offender, but on the costs (that word again) of his ...”

“... around his index finger, which is still marking the place. It is as if he has agreed to stop reading for just a moment, so that the photo can be taken. He stares straight at the camera and his expression is grim. Being a literary critic is a serious business; he will make no attempt to charm us. Ellis is well aware of Leavis’s joyless reputation and ...”

“... eggs, others preferred to call them poached. Either way, any attempt to describe the appearance of Peter Lorre must deal with those eyes. What teeth are to Julia Roberts and lips to Angelina Jolie, his bulging eyes were to Peter Lorre, his unavoidable calling card and a feature quite out of proportion with the norm. He ...”

“... empathetically in the direction of an image of Adolf Hitler he has developed in his own mind after reading half a dozen books. But the task of Kershaw, who has immersed himself over decades in treatises and archival records, can scarcely be to sound out his own spiritual affinity with Hitler, it must rather be to understand what it was about him, even in his ...”

“... of the word, a handbook; Waters’s notes, bibliographical references and suggestions for further reading hit the right notes and the right works for beginners. His clear maps have been worked up from specialist originals in the Cambridge Ancient History and the Cambridge History of Iran. Welcome aids include a full timeline, numerous in-text figures and ...”

“... to be attempting to base conclusions about cultural or social history on little more than a close reading of a few texts. If they do not want to practise other methods, they might perhaps collaborate more closely with those who do. The poetics of culture, as Greenblatt defines it, is too important a task to leave to literary critics, or even to ...”