“... Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Twelfth Night, and quite a lot more about Hamlet. This account may make the book sound scrappy, but it holds together. Its chief hero Hamlet keeps returning to the scene like a reassuring leitmotif, and there are other compensating virtues. Ms Everett is, as always, discursive, and as always ready to take any promising ...”

“... periodic revolts in Upper Egypt. Finally the Romans take over and whip everyone back into line. It may be that this overview is broadly correct, but it is only just beginning to be put to the test. And the test comes from study of other documents, preferably archives, of different date and provenance from the Zenon archive, and including Egyptian texts, all ...”

“... and reinforced. Those partial to the conspiracy theory of the sinking island of English letters may take comfort from the fact that the selection of poems in Essential Reading (1986) is edited by Alan Jenkins of the TLS. And that book contains a few examples of what are (in part at least) knowing winks: after describing a catalogue of sufferings in ...”

“... Federal Germans are giving to those ‘from over there’ is warm and generous. Lubeck and Hamburg may have said, ‘Enough is enough,’ but even the mafiosi Bavarians, with their traditional hatred of everything Prussian and Protestant, for whom ‘socialism’ and ‘atheism’ are synonyms, got schools, town halls and Ratskeller ready to receive the masses ...”

“... Johnson, whose ghostly appearance in this survey of ‘post-war pop’ (he died before the war) may be conclusive proof of his supernatural powers. Johnson’s life and music are legendary, largely because he is thought to have sold his soul to the devil. Hendrix and Johnson have obvious affinities – both died young, both were keen philanderers, both were ...”

“... are distinct Japanese characteristics (such as indirectness) in Ishiguro’s work, however much he may disclaim them. But the choice of a loyal elderly senior servant as his English narrator has meant that Ishiguro can use indirectness, obliquity, and indeed the troubling pressures of obligation and indebtedness, in a way that is clearly congenial to him, and ...”

“... mediated’, in Conrad’s phrase, and patches of its careful prose feel as if they may have been polished once or twice too often, as in ‘there were larks and plovers over the fields, and the tall blue days seemed amazed by their own candour,’ or ‘there was ... an impenetrable thoughtfulness hanging on the air like scent.’ Edward ...”

“... were paid for by his brother-in-law John T. Milliken, who had married Patrick’s beautiful sister May. Milliken had telegraphed Patrick’s counsel at the beginning of the case: ‘One million dollars, if necessary, for Patrick’s legitimate defence.’ As the case wore on and the defence case became clearer more and more people were willing to testify that ...”

“... a religious genius, and hopes there will be more like him – for a mad moment one suspects he may have himself in mind for the part – but doesn’t want his own beliefs to be mistaken for any others that may be on offer. He is the sole modern expositor of a faith recovered from antiquity, and he urges all persons of ...”

“... he” ... Every he? Every man? What about the other 50 percent of the population?’ Here he may be anticipating the movement for children’s rights, as even the levellers were advocating only an adult franchise and adults comprised only about 55 per cent of the Early Modern population. As a result of his astounding productivity there has been much ...”

“... An exultant Cornwell described the Putnam deal as ‘the biggest ever for a woman’, which it may not be (Danielle Steel is more discreet about her advances). A list of the 25 all-time bestselling mystery titles drawn up by USA Today in March listed six Scarpetta titles, with The Body Farm (1994) at number one. In July 1996 Cause of Death was the ...”

“... in America, and his renown probably stems less from his poems, meritorious as the best of those may be, than from his political journalism and celebrated daredevilry, This indifference to contemporary English verse appears all the more ironic and quizzical in light of the determined attempts by numerous schools of American poetry to look beyond their own ...”

“... each by one of her two daughters. She is best known for her convent school novel Frost in May, which Elizabeth Bowen admired for being both a ‘minor classic’ and a ‘work of art’. It was published in 1933; by 1954 its author was complaining that it hung ‘round my neck like a withered wreath’. She would have liked her three subsequent novels ...”

“... at Edgbaston in the first test, when Ramadhin was required to bowl 98 successive overs while May and Cowdrey put on 411 for the fourth wicket. Sobers, who could bowl fast, reveals that he offered to try taking the long overdue new ball, but Goddard would not take this risk! Ramadhin himself was demoralised and took only five further wickets in the ...”

“... is Barthelme’s stories. In ‘Marie, Marie, hold on tight’ (an early effort which the author may now find embarrassingly obvious), the leader of the protest against the human condition ended up by delivering a lecture ‘with good diction and enunciation’ to a tiny audience. The lecturer had eloquence, and eloquence, he said, is ‘really all any of us ...”