“... whole event in some sane perspective? They cannot retreat into a grand carelessness until they are John le Carré or John Fowles. They might begin, however, by running through the list of previous winners and working out how many of the last 19 would feature in any ‘true’ list of Top 19 Novels 1969-87. They might observe ...”

“... of Nations. It is the price of a useful and virtuous existence, of influence and undying fame. John Home’s History of the Rebellion of 1745 was not published until 1802, so Smith may not have seen it (though I bet he did). It contains an account of the meeting between Lochiel and Charles Edward at MacDonald of Boradale’s. Lochiel argued long and hard ...”

“... appointed by the pillars of the Jerusalem Church (James, the brother of Jesus, Peter and John) to take the Christian message from Jerusalem to Rome, with his martyrdom omitted, perhaps to avoid depicting Rome’s opposition to early Christians. And then there is the Paul of the Aprocrypha, one version of which I have quoted. Finally, most important ...”

“... This is a weakness which he shares with Philip Larkin and with Larkin’s American contemporary John Berryman – two marvellous poets, but men who perhaps took too much delight in presenting themselves as forthright and illusion-free souls; although Larkin’s tough talk (‘before I snuff it’, ‘some brass and stuff/Up at the holy end’) is a little ...”

“... work or even to lead his readers through a particular poem. Valéry, Allen Tate, William Empson, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and Robert Lowell were instructive in that way. But it is rare for a poet to lead readers through a poem, draft by draft, or explain how he settled for one word rather than another. Yeats did not offer to explain how he got ...”

“... his most famous title, The Selfish Gene. But he has a more distinguished target in the person of John Keats, who memorably said that Newton’s optical analysis of the rainbow destroyed its poetry. In answer to Keats and other poets distrustful of science, Dawkins says: ‘It is my thesis that the spirit of wonder which led Blake to Christian ...”

“... and who is prepared to stand up to the remaining superpower bully, the principal enemy of Islam. John Cooley is a veteran Middle East hand who has covered the region for the Christian Science Monitor and, more recently, for ABC television. His thesis is that the US – together with some of its closest allies, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan ...”

“... New York journal on 18 February. This was not a new sentiment in the United States. In 1823 John Quincy Adams had suggested that ‘there are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation,’ so all New World Newtons ought to know what to do: if an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ...”

“... way things are all manner of discontinuous instrumentalities, and one of these is the aphorism. So John Gross’s Oxford Book of Aphorisms might, if properly used, be less a book to nod over than a neo-philosophical catena, an instance of the edifying that ousts the epistemological. As a matter of fact, it contains some strong anti-systematic ...”

“... and the health of their opponents. Apparently, however, they do not. Which brings us, at last, to John Maynard Smith. It was in an attempt, ten years ago, to show how the theory of individual selfishness could explain the restrained nature of animal contests that he introduced game theory to evolutionary biology. The explanation so perfectly illustrates his ...”

“... came the Second World War and a sudden upsurge in reputation, with Maurice Bowra, Stephen Spender, John Piper, Kenneth Clark, John Lehmann and others going hysterical about her: a kind of trendy Stringalong situation, we are invited to judge. Then by 1954 it is all over and the balloon deflated for good. Can my dislike of ...”

“... with Dr Küng is a little like chiding the Third International for not adopting the principles of John Stuart Mill in its dealings with Lukacs. And when therefore John Paul II – who, like Evelyn Waugh, as Randolph Churchill remarked to an earlier Pope, is himself a Roman Catholic – did not respond to Dr Küng’s ...”

“... River itself on a boat or raft. While the air thickens with flying misquotations from Major John Wesley Powell’s pioneer navigation of the Canyon in 1869, the less committed among us may reflect that these approved ways of seeing the place are extremely time-consuming, and require the setting aside of three or more days of one’s time, and the ...”

“... they deal with public affairs, there must be much in them which is no longer readily understood. John Michael Gibson and Richard Lancelyn Green have prudently decided against annotation, preferring to provide 13 notes on selected topics. They provide, also, a ‘Categorical Index’, excellent alike in conception and ...”

“... but many other sorts of workmen, will put in for, and get the prize.’ (Boyle’s supporter John Wallis retaliated by openly sneering at Hobbes’s plebeian-sounding surname.) Shapin and Schaffer were quickly led to realise that much wider issues were at stake in the controversy than merely the status of experiment. ‘Testifying’ about experiments to ...”