“... It may be that the grotesque world of the small wars waged by the Reagan Administration in Central America has faded from public memory. Even at the time, there were never that many who were prepared to make the effort to distinguish between Nicaragua and El Salvador, let alone the even more obscure Honduras and Costa Rica ...”

“... to the next, to the effect that Uncle Arhat’s corpse had disappeared mysteriously. ‘China may have nothing else, but it’s got plenty of people.’ A bloody defeat is really a great victory, an old man declares: ‘There are four hundred million of us Chinese. If we take on the Japs, one on one, how do you think their little country will fare? If one ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Jane Austen. As in Austen’s case, if there is a price to be paid for elegance and economy it may lie in a limitation of range. The only scene in The Old Jest that seemed to me descriptively a little unsure was the dramatic climax. There is also an unavoidable tendency towards oversimplification: we see the characters only partially, only by certain ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... truth from the web of lies around Bitov, because his escapade is of little real significance. What may be of some importance, however, is Bitov’s background – his role as a representative of the middle echelon of journalists working on one of the most interesting Soviet newspapers, the Literary Gazette. This is not, as its title might suggest, a Soviet ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... feeling: ‘Surely, eyes more capable than ours of receiving the range of universal radiation may well see her [the earth], this creature of argent and azure, to have robes of green and gold streamed a million miles from her by the solar wind as she dances around Helios in the joy of light.’ He has the same sense of numinous remoteness in contemplating ...”

“... available to historians – such as letters, journals, parish registers, court records – may contain bits and pieces of detailed material of this sort, they can never be fitted together into a single coherent whole. And it is no use guessing on the basis of analogy from present to past. ‘Conjectural history’ is a waste of time. This thesis seems ...”

“... and functions); they are often (perhaps always) conscious; and they are often intensional. (You may wonder why philosophers sometimes spell ‘intentional’ with a t and sometimes with an s; and why Deacon feels compelled to compound the homonymity with the neologistic ‘ententional’. But it is better not to ask.) Deacon’s book is about the way ...”

“... about legal processes framed at a level of generality large enough to embrace all member states may well be unworkable in some of them. The first of these difficulties has historically been tackled by the use of the margin of appreciation, a literal rendering, meaningless in English, of the French marge d’appréciation, which means margin of judgment. It ...”

“... Churchill made in 1947-48. In a speech to a United Europe Meeting at the Albert Hall on 14 May 1947, Churchill asked:Are we Europeans to become incapable, with all our tropical and colonial dependencies, with all our long-created trading connections, with all that modern production and transportation can do, of even averting famine from the mass of our ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”