“... by homicidal maniacs on a collision course are also coming closer to one another. The novelist David Lodge, in one of the earnest but flustered contributions typical of Authors take sides on the Falklands, is more realistic. He writes that regaining the Falklands is not worth one human life. But he then confesses: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that ...”

“... an attempt to steer the party away from socialism – the attempt on which William Rodgers and David Owen seem to be embarked, and which has led Roy Jenkins and David Marquand to abandon the party. A desperate public cry to Shirley Williams: why have you got so lost in that company, one with ineffable self-confidence but ...”

“... Young – who performed his forthcoming album, Harvest, at a party in John’s house – and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who, when Elton went to see him, sang the chorus of ‘Your Song’ (‘I hope you don’t mind/I hope you don’t mind’) over and over. ‘By now, the novelty of hearing the chorus of “Your Song” sung to me by one of pop ...”

“... In his​ History of Great Britain, published in 1653, Arthur Wilson wrote: ‘I see no reason why princes (towering in the height of their own power) should think themselves so far above ordinary mortals, that their actions are to be incomprehensible. This is but a weakness, contracted in the high place they look down from ...”

“... Hill supplies an engaging and suggestive piece on radical pirates after the Restoration; Wilson Hays offers an interesting study of John Everard; and there is some predictably tough and valuable political analysis from David Underdown and Nicholas Rogers. What emerges from most of these essays, however, is not so ...”

“... excesses which have resulted (appendices of hyphen lists, for instance) were satirised by Edmund Wilson. Within academic circles there have been ferocious, quasi-theological disputes as to whether copy-text be first or last published version in the author’s lifetime, whether it should follow old or new spelling, and what should be done with substantive ...”

“... Baudelaire and his Gallic followers. The hero of the first novella writes mysteries as William Wilson, and gets involved in a case by taking a chance on a wrong number and doubling as the private eye asked for, Paul Auster ‘of the Auster Detective Agency’. In fact, the ingeniously-constructed Trilogy is peppered with references to Auster himself, to ...”

“... the precariousness and fragility of human lives, not their culmination in calamity. As Emily Wilson points out in the first volume of this ambitious history of the form, tragedy in ancient times was confined to the theatre. You couldn’t have a tragic novel or a tragic view of the world. Nor could you have a tragic famine or case of heart failure. Using ...”

“... and soundscape appears in several of her compatriots’ work, in the poetry of Grace Nichols and David Dabydeen, and, especially, in the fiction of Wilson Harris. (I once invited Harris, a long-time resident of Chelmsford, to talk about what it was like to live in Essex: he wrote back to say that he had no idea – his ...”

“... for three days after an accident on the A9 was reported to the police (they both died). Gordon Wilson, a former leader of the SNP, has called for the break-up of the national police service, and the creation of four new regional forces. Yet, this brouhaha notwithstanding, the controversy over police reforms has not translated into a perception of the SNP ...”

“... by setting about it with the enthusiasm of crusaders clearing the infidel from Jerusalem. David Herlihy of Harvard derided it as ‘a silly book, founded on faulty method and propounding a preposterous thesis’, while Lawrence Stone thought it advanced ‘an implausible hypothesis based on a far-fetched connection with one still uproven fact of ...”

“... past. The extraction and analysis of ancient DNA from human skeletal remains, the field in which David Reich is a leading researcher, is a technical advance that eclipses the advent of radiocarbon dating in the 1950s, and is already transforming our knowledge, not only of human biological evolution, but also of human history and culture. The potential value ...”

“... the young and unpublished Patricia Highsmith to Yaddo in 1948. In 1949 he recommended Angus Wilson’s first book to Cecil Beaton. That same year, however, when Arthur Miller won the Pulitzer for Death of a Salesman, he thought the news ‘quite tiresome’. Later in 1949, he described the arrival of Auden on Ischia as having ‘thrown something of a ...”

“... theme, for example, Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (1976) and Ben Wilson’s lively Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy (2013), but these shorter works concentrate on high power politics rather than the inner workings of the Royal Navy. Kennedy starts, in fact, by telling us that he won’t concern himself ...”

“... to deliver much more than formulaic world-weariness, a drone like a miraculously articulate David Hockney impersonator. Jonathan Meades does this schtick so much better, performs himself with lip-smacking relish. Gossip has its charms, but not when it’s dragged out over three interminable evenings with animated postcard footage re-used to the point of ...”