“... reworking by soloists of original melodies, stripped to their chord-structure, offers one of the best instances of substantially the same process in action. It’s not insignificant (as we say) that Oscar Peterson should have produced a work entitled ‘Signify’ or that Count Basie should have recorded numbers called ‘Signifyin’ and ‘The Dirty ...”

“... of with their rulers. What Disraeli called ‘a spirited foreign policy’, and held up as the best way to turn discontent outwards, had come to be accepted by statesmen everywhere as their domestic cure-all, heedless of the fact that it was bringing a European war closer and closer. In Spain in that era, the two right-wing parties came to an agreement to ...”

“... is not only non-theoretical but anti-theoretical. Enright’s tone, I should judge, is at its best when genially sturdy, when, for instance, he deplores Flaubert’s craving to score off his characters, and – worse – the craving of his commentators to egg him on: When Bovary’s horse stumbles as he enters Les Bertaux, the farm owned by Emma’s ...”

“... than ideas, and that since literature is written by people, about people and for people, it is best treated as human stuff and in a human way. Once upon a time Bayley would not have felt the need to spell out such a commonplace, but as fashions in the university have changed he has been drawn increasingly onto the offensive. The present volume acknowledges ...”

“... are not very good: Day-Lewis was not by nature a rhetorician, and his public poetic voice was at best unconvincing, and at worst embarrassingly false (as in his unfortunate poem about Winston Churchill, ‘Who goes home?’). But the very fact that he wrote them must have made his claim to the laureateship seem overwhelmingly strong when the time came. For ...”

“... to the spare requirements of a myth, and it can be said to have begun in what Neville Cardus, in best Cider with Rosie vein, once wrote of as the ‘plain, lusty humours of his first practices in a Gloucestershire orchard’, and ended in London NW8, in the memorial street-furniture of the Grace gates that open onto the élite end of the ground at ...”

“... Tomlinson, Ted Hughes, Robert Graves, Hugh MacDiarmid, J.M. Synge, David Jones, George Steiner, Geoffrey Hill, Elizabeth Daryush and the fraternity of poets anthologised by Andrew Crozier and Tim Longville in A Various Art. It also includes a number of Davie’s poems. If we were to read the adjective ‘British’ in the subtitle of the book as an ...”

“... the status quo, and that, when the process finally broke down, it did so despite Lincoln’s best efforts to preserve slavery in the South, on condition that it not be allowed to expand into new territories. By this reckoning (which most historians outside the neo-Confederate fringe agree on) the North didn’t fail to compromise; it compromised all the ...”

“... in the Roman army. At the time, Foche’s claims were perhaps no stranger than those made by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s that traced the kings of Britain back to Brutus the Trojan, a descendant of Aeneas. As Britain sought to distance itself from France, Foche’s ideas had a certain appeal, but they didn’t catch on straightaway. When, in the ...”

“... had committed suicide, and a ceremonial service was held in the House of Commons. But despite his best efforts there was a flaw in the plan. Lord Lucan had vanished just two weeks before Stonehouse and people were on the lookout. So when a bank employee on his lunch break noticed a tall, self-assured Englishman going in and out of a number of different banks ...”

“... In 1936, Almasy starts a passionate affair with Katharine, the young wife of an English colleague, Geoffrey Clifton. Long after the affair has ended, in the last days before the war, Almasy returns to the Gilf Kebir ‘to clear out the base camp’. Clifton is meant to fly in and pick him up. Instead he flies his plane at Almasy in an attempt to kill him. The ...”

“... to take the boat to England to avail themselves of abortion services there. It will also cost the best part of a million pounds. In this at least, the Labour Party, having secured agreement to a free vote, is on the side of the angels: with the women’s movement, some party spokesmen have formed the major focus of opposition to this Brobdingnagian ...”

“... to diagnosis is a mystery plot with inherent narrative tension; the stakes are life and death. The best physician-novelists – Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton (who was also the creator of the show ER) – deploy technical language and scientific reasoning to produce an effect of dazzling competence. For the lay reader, the presence of a scientific ...”

“... be filled in with a date to remind the recipient when the next present is due. Nigel’s creator, Geoffrey Willans, was parodying a document which still lingered in the British national consciousness: the Field Service Post Card, or Army Form A. 2042, produced during the First World War.A. 2042 was designed to be sent to family or friends at home by those on ...”

“... surprisingly little material detail, given the central role that manners and habitus play in his best-known work. Then, too, Benjamin was broken by the events of the Thirties and eventually took his own life, whereas Elias repeatedly emphasises the inner confidence he gained from his early years, enabling him to cope with the war, emigration and long ...”