“... receivers. In the past few months, however, there has been a most important new development which may drastically alter the balance of opinion in Britain and which I do not think has yet been generally understood. This is the substantial appreciation of sterling vis-à-vis the currencies of other European countries as a direct result of the new Government’s ...”

“... succeeds the climax and brings Mr Pedigree back, is extremely moving. Reaction afterwards, though, may be disappointment at what seems the patness of the fable: terrorists, hostages, the emptiness of evil, all things running down into aimlessness. It is an odd thing, certainly, that any novel today which tries to make use of what seems the all-important ...”

“... diver sets his seal Where even fish can’t see reflected flame. A surfer in the folded tube may form His signature unnoticed from the foam. Night fighters’ ailerons worked just the same And Salome might think of her next meal. True, but not true enough, in my belief. These things though tenuous aren’t set apart. The casual grace-note can’t help ...”

“... She is clever, but seems less successful in action than less clever people. Seeing the truth may make you an incompetent Cassandra or holy fool when the code which turns knowing into action is faulty. Scraps of conversation or memories define and exemplify the quality of the love affair. In the chapter about the stay in Ireland there are fewer of ...”

“... systems (programs) whose significance is assigned by human beings, any ‘interests’ we may choose [sic] to ascribe to them are not intrinsic to their nature, but parasitic on our own. It is this which leads me to say in several essays that psychological predicates could not be ascribed in a literal sense to any imaginable computer, even if its ...”

“... drawn from the wider culture of the time which illuminate what its implicit artistic theory may well have been. For the sculptors’ attitude towards the qualities inherent in the wood with which they were to contend, and whose qualities they were to elicit by their skill, Baxandall turns to Paracelsus’s notion of chiromancy – the art of reading the ...”

“... mother, an ineffectual father, intimations of incest ... But wait a minute, Josie’s imaginings may be no more than that: imaginings. Her brain isn’t working too well, they tell her in the hospital, she is a starving organism and her brain is starving too. She knows better: she is closer to pure, elemental consciousness than ever before. It’s the ...”

“... on the basis of bad-faith corruption charges got her out of the way of Brazil’s elites. Rouseff may have felt, in relaxing the enforcement of environmental policy, that a sagging economy could not easily afford the loss of export revenue attendant on saving the rainforest. In any case, the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon was not properly greenlighted ...”

“... than a rethinking of the model. In fact, Linklater suggests in an interview, his work on Boyhood may have helped Before Sunset and Before Midnight to come into being. In Boyhood the photographic interest, so to speak, is in the children’s changing from round infants into lanky teens, and in the record of the period, those ageing rock songs, that first ...”

“... straitjacket of filth.’ Or David’s wife, far from celebrating the possibility that her husband may have a second chance at a cancer cure, bitterly thinks: ‘No, it will be a second agony.’ These post-anomaly chapters are both the least ‘experimental’, employing traditional psychological-realist plotting and characterisation to elicit genuine ...”

“... d’être is or was being of the centre, came close to being eliminated at the general election in May, and it’s fantasy to believe that the Conservative Party now occupies that position. Those who argue that Labour should move to the centre, the party’s perpetual ‘modernisers’, are in practice suggesting that Labour should adopt policies wholly ...”

“... the court has overfilled its list, and so they have to return months later, when the same thing may happen again. Some give up, and defendants go free by default. The government would rather waste everyone’s time than pay to keep enough courts open to hear cases without unreasonable delays. The House of Commons Justice Committee reported that 55 per cent ...”

“... more obviously symbols of affluence than others. Randolph Hearst’s Neptune pool at San Simeon may be the most opulent pool ever constructed, with its elaborately tiled floor and surrounding statues, colonnades and classical façades. The second most opulent pool may be the indoor ‘Roman’ pool Hearst built at his ...”

“... probably a result of previous underreporting – and the Mayor of Beijing had been sacked. This may well have been the first time since the Revolution that anyone really senior had lost their job for incompetence, rather than because of political in-fighting. Everybody on the train back to the North-East had their home address and phone number taken by the ...”

“... after such a long journey. It is true Afrikaner hospitality and, however odious my escort here may be, they are deeply embedded in this culture and they can’t say no to its hospitality. Besides, however pressing it may be to get me to Durban Central, they’ve had only one smallish meat pie each for their police ...”