“... are however assailed, reasonably enough, in the persons of directors like Peter Brook and John Barton whose productions are determined by Kott’s or some other’s attempts to find in Shakespeare 20th-century ‘relevance’. Next man up is Stanley Fish, author of Surprised by Sin, Self-Consuming Artefacts and Is there a text in this class? Fish is a ...”

“... issue to be settled on non-controversial lines. This was a serious phase in his career, as John Grigg’s fine biography makes clear. It is certainly not enough to dismiss the 1910 coalition memorandum, as Mr Sykes does, as the product of ‘an attack of nerves’. From 1910 onwards, L.G. was to some degree an Empire man, if not protectionist. He was a ...”

“... and in this he has behind him, not only the authority of Blake’s friends George Cumberland and John Linnell, but more recently that of Sir Geoffrey Keynes. Nevertheless there is still, to my mind, a case to be made for transferral. In the first place, Blake was extremely secretive, and it is clear that no one except his immediate family actually saw him ...”

“... to the important collections of essays edited by J.S. Cockburn (Crime in England, 1550-1750), by John Brewer and John Styles (An Ungovernable People?) and by V.A. Gatrell, B. Lenman and G. Parker (Crime and the Law); to the implications of the work of Peter Laslett; and above all to the burgeoning number of studies of ...”

“... are so fond of the ‘inscrutability’ of Japanese faces. I fear, then, for this splendid book by John David Morley, based on his three-year stay in Japan during the mid-Seventies, which adopts the approach of assuming the Japanese to be human beings, and rather ordinary ones at that. Pictures from the Water Trade is a mixture of narrative, descriptive ...”

“... It is no wonder that none of the particulars I have so far cited appear in Jeffrey Richards and John MacKenzie’s history, exceptionally rich though it is in station lore collected world-wide, and assiduous in its pursuit both of main-line socio-economic themes and of lightly trafficked sub-cultural branches. I claim no special knowledge of my own but for ...”

“... in the dock denies dishonestly handling the video: he says he got it in the pub off a man called John. ‘John who?’ asks prosecuting counsel. ‘Dunno,’ says the accused. ‘How long have you known him?’ says counsel. ‘Oh, we’ve drunk together for years,’ says the accused. ‘And you don’t know his ...”

“... above everything else occasions giving scope to the rapid cut and thrust of spoken controversy. John Lawlor, another pupil, has recorded that argument was the only form of conversation ever employed by Lewis in his presence. It must be a question whether such an eristic temperament made Lewis an ideal tutor, although he was assuredly an outstanding one. He ...”

“... M.A.K. Halliday, Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey Leech, Jennifer Coates, F.R. Palmer, R.A. Close, John Sinclair, Jan Firbas, Nils Enkvist, David Crystal, Jan Svartvik, Wolf-Dietrich Bald, Nelson Francis, Morton Bloomfield, E.L. Epstein, John Lyons, Archibald Hill, James Sledd, R.I. McDavid Jr, R.K. O’Cain, Linda ...”

“... But now we must face the horrors, the other horrors. Early in the 1960s Toomey gives his nephew John Campanati, a young anthropologist interested in language structure, money to go, with his wife, to research in a new African state – money earned from writing ‘sedative fiction’ and film scripts. By now the reader is likely to guess what will ...”

“... David Bindman does not think that Hogarth was joking when he gave one of his contemporaries, John Nichols, a comic demonstration of minimalism: it took the form of a diagram composed of three lines and he claimed that it contained his memory of ‘a Sergeant with his pike going into an Ale House, and his Dog following ...”

“... linked constitutional crisis, which forced the monarchy to call the Estates General. The first, John Bosher has told us, was the result not only of defaultings in tax payments after bad harvests but of the system itself, which was dependent upon the personal credit of innumerable local tax officials and provincial trésoriers who anticipated revenues by ...”

“... By the time you read me, anything might be happening. Brian Clough or Bob Stokoe or Elton John could be the new England manager, nursing bruised dreams for the World Cup in 1986. On the other hand, Sir Ron Greenwood might even now be contentedly inspecting the hotels in Bilbao, hoping to find a likely venue for the lads next summer. Thanks to a series ...”

“... their own performances, behind footlights or from Java; hence the cult of Eleanora Duse, on which John Stokes here contributes a very good paper. Shaw admired her extraordinary professional skills, but others saw her as a Prazian Fatal Woman, wishing to be scared or exalted out of their wits by her. ‘Her great discovery was probably to have found that ...”

“... of the maimed Victorian sexual life – the disclosed private writings of Munby, Housman, John Addington Symonds and others – but we are strangely put off by the unseemly nakedness of their personal outpourings. The imagery they chose – their two ladybirds, each on the other side of the window, close, but unable to touch, the spectator consigned ...”