“... us? – orange juice as we cast off, fudge as we meet the ocean funnelling into the inlet of Cape May, then boiled chestnuts, grey and wrinkled as the seas our stomachs ride (the heaving field of Delaware Bay) all morning, and for lunch a chocolate kiss and an apple from the pollen of two trees sensibly rooted, restaurants of bees ... What can our helpless ...”

“... towered stand Are the famed brandy of the damned And Wunderkinder who begin With champagne lights may end in gin. A drink, lest I forget thee, Zion. Which human host can match the Devil? God’s watery water is no use – The anthropologists’ excuse States every known society Makes alcohol and poetry Which in their likenesses explore Creation’s toxic ...”

“... closed These two sweet pages you were crushed between? Here is a green bus-ticket for one week In May, my place-mark in ‘The Dill Pickle’. I did not come home that Friday. I flick Through all our years, my love; and I love you still. These stories must have been inside my head That day, falling in love, preparing this Good life; and this, this ...”

“... pity when the story is so briskly anecdotal. However, the book has a fine, strange beginning which may be enough to make you decide to get it into your hands immediately: How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill ...”

“... entirely wrong to regard Gash, Tory or not, as a narrow historian. His notions of history-writing may not accommodate the wilder ambitions of Whigs like John Morley, who said that ‘the history of England ought to end with something that might be called a moral,’ or Professor Seeley, whose Expansion of England, invigorating though it is, gave ample proof ...”

“... at least have some sense of style. Wishing-wells, piped organ music and Cadillacs on the house may not be everyone’s choice, but they would certainly brighten up what most British have to suffer in the process of getting wed. And the idea that these chapels offer a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week service also has its appeal. Better surely than 10 to ...”

“... critics. Such disagreement will require a serious answer to the question of how Muslim nations may work to build a just and free society within a religious framework, without surrender to or constant threat from extremist elements. If the novel is remembered for having once again raised the possibility of such reformist consciousness among moderate ...”

“... pleasure in delivering it to those who have tired of riotous living in a far country may even prompt the hospitable suggestion that the fatted calf’s number is up (given that it can no longer be exported). But there is another way of reading the same question, which will naturally appeal to those who still do not repent for having joined the ...”

“... writing about it and making it public. At one level, Gordimer’s work over the last three decades may be read as the representative political chronicle of the society in which she lives. The chronicle is deepened and made personal not only by the portrayal of individuals and the entering of other people’s minds, but by a recurrent concern with ...”

“... to overcome them – although they are also that. The papers show, as much as they discuss, what may be involved in the idea of the responsibilities of intellectuals. The papers by Eastern and Western writers are very different in tone and concern – and who would be surprised? Most of the Eastern European writers take for granted that intellectuals have ...”

“... his life, obediently reinforcing the English stereotype of the feckless Mick. Of course Heathcliff may not be Irish at all. He may be a gypsy, or a lascar, or (like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre) a creole. It is hard to know how black he is, or rather how much of the blackness is grime and bile and how much pigmentation. As for ...”

“... and what the philosopher W.B. Gallie called ‘followability’ aren’t everything, that they may be sacrificed in a good cause, then admirable precedents are not wanting. Conceits can be combined with stories at acceptable cost to the stories. A narrative line can be more or less sustained through complex verse-forms and under repeated pressure from ...”

“... instalments will be complete this summer, has reportedly clocked up almost a hundred sales. That may not seem a lot, until you multiply it by the unit price of £30,000 (£5000 cheaper if you got in early). Chadwyck-Healey is a commercial publisher and the sales figures are now well past break-even into substantial profit. More important, enough databases ...”

“... also. For that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting, is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr Whistler himself entirely concurs.’ There have been quite a number of biographies of Whistler since the lengthy and allegedly ‘authorised’ one by the artist Joseph Pennell and his wife, published in 1908. The Pennells are the ...”

“... in the midst of a lethal hailstorm? If the latter, then this will be a Nato-assisted pull-out. God may know what that means, but Nato planners are clueless and frightened. To back his claim that the UN pull-out does not mean war, President Tudjman claims that Serbia and the Yugoslav Army are too weary and battered to fight on behalf of their Krajina ...”