“... 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 ...”

“... he is up to. We know that as a young man he moved to Moscow because he was a Communist. But he may have been involved there in something more sinister than tailoring; he may be mad; he may have intended to murder the fashion magnate and fled from a bad conscience. Two American couples ...”

“... we can handle all the European themes, but without superstition, with an irreverence which may have, which already has, happy consequences.’ Culture in this sense, to add contemporary Europeans to the analogy, would be ours to play with, to learn from, to adapt and prolong, it would be what literature always is for ...”

“... of pain and loss of self can represent the almost intolerable shamanic journey from which you may emerge a poet, like Taliesin, or a healer, like Vikram.‘Anancy and the Hideaway Garden’ (James Berry’s excellent rendering), gives us the opposite scenario. Old Witch-Sister has a beautiful garden which Anancy Spider-man wants to enjoy. ‘Look at ...”

“... approaches, bows unsteadily, and declares with exaggerated gallantry: ‘Oh beautiful lady in red, may I have this waltz?’ The person thus addressed replies: ‘No, Mr Brown, and for three reasons. First, you are too drunk to dance. Secondly, this is not a waltz but the Brazilian national anthem. And thirdly, I am not a beautiful lady in red but the Papal ...”

“... the place of anti-swell-mob ones.   Presently a glimpse of green country or of distant hills may be caught between the wider spaces of the houses, and frequent settings down increase the space between the passengers; gradually conservatories appear, and conversation strikes up; then comes the exclusiveness of villas, some detached and others running out ...”

“... the ‘progress’, which were sometimes described as comic history painting, and which may have contained the implication that the commercial England of the mid-18th century was not a place in which ideal history painting in the Italian manner could flourish – and that this was a cause for congratulation, not regret. What the English needed was ...”

“... prime minister; Terry is now a dab hand at the DIY. The two callings are not worlds apart, as some may think. And Terry, as the bigger boy, still has the edge. On the front cover of his ‘Memories of an Older Brother’, he is to be seen alongside one of the old firm’s garden ornaments: a dinky humanoid in ruminative stance. Terry is slightly in the ...”