“... supported by Futility, does not seem a strong enough base on which to rebuild a reputation. It may even reinforce the old view that Gerhardie was no more than a quite interesting and rather peculiar kind of failure. In fact, everybody interested in good novels should read him. I speak as a new convert, for although I read Futility forty years ago I knew ...”

“... it by wit’. Stevie Smith’s poems are full of transformations and translations: a frog may become a prince, a typist gets sucked into the seascape of a Turner canvas in her lunch-hour. But what gives her verse its distinctive ring is her way of putting together the humdrum and the elevated in situation and vocabulary. In her poems large events ...”

“... Mottahedeh is not an apologist for the revolution. He recognises that this portrait of a mullah may satisfy neither its opponents nor its supporters. Some Iranians will feel that the account of the mullah who stands at the centre of this book’s personal narrative is not reverential enough; he has experienced doubts and shifts of attitude that they will ...”

“... persons so qualified, had not dragged poor Sir Thomas into light and ridicule.’ Walpole may shape events too readily in terms of antithesis (as of the reverse at Fort Duquesne in 1755, when General Braddock, ‘finding his generalship exerted too late, pushed his valour to desperation’). More often, the feline wit serves purposes of acute ...”

“... through extracts from diaries, from correspondence and from the two rival newspapers. Poe may seem out of place in the list of predecessors. The Lin Tin Bulletin hails his edition of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as an enthralling factual account, which earns the paper the ridicule of the Monitor: a reminder that we are on treacherous ground. An ...”

“... true to his promise that he would move there in October 1883 ‘in whatever condition the premises may be’. One party of casual passers-by, seeing workmen and open doors, took a look inside and were surprised to find Gilbert in residence. Contemporary photographs show dark, elaborate interiors in which dramatist and architect (Harold Peto took 7 Collingham ...”

“... of providing a future for their children. Of course my grandmother’s story and my research may not really contradict one another. Flatt may have first defended the acquisition of land, and later thought it was becoming excessive. But at least my anecdote demonstrates something relevant to Witi Ihimaera’s ...”

“... Schools of Social Science none of whose members believe in or practise functionalism. They may be wrong. If so, then someone must either do a better job on the formal logic of functionalist explanation, or else argue that it is not a type of discussion that lends itself to formalisation. The rest of Douglas’s book suggests the latter alternative. The ...”

“... could accept with equanimity the death at sea of several hundred sailors simply because – if I may borrow that phrase – they came from a country with which we were in dispute and which had a tradition of putting up too readily with dictatorial regimes. And if there are those who find it distasteful to talk in the same breath, as though that puts them on ...”

“... Drabble’s three women remain intelligent onlookers, well-meaning but detached. In part, this may be because the novelist is concerned to avoid the kinds of melodramatic resolution which are suggested by her closeness to the 19th-century novel tradition. Liz Headleand, though a psychotherapist, spends most of the novel putting off her need to enquire into ...”

“... need critical evaluation, and we do not find it here. Mr Graves is a biographer, not a critic, and may plead that, in the case of a romantic poet like Housman it is legitimate to make biographical inferences from his poems: but one becomes infuriated by his unvarying assumption that every poem may be related to some incident ...”

“... the two neighbours.’ Professor Brooks admits that this is bad, and agrees that Shakespeare may have agreed to have it changed on the prompt-book, but is certain he wrote it at first, because of the rules invented by Dover Wilson for the misinterpretation of his handwriting. Surely anyone used to correcting proofs knows that all kinds of mistakes ...”

“... it is right to report angry comments made by a colleague about a third person – comments which may have been regretted as soon as made. Should I, for example, now report comments made to me about Barbara by people who, to judge from this book, she thought were her admirers? After all, perhaps they were her admirers, despite momentary irritation. Barbara ...”

“... action, and his lack of responsibility for the failures of Brezhnev’s last years (only in May 1982 did he leave the KGB to return to the Central Committee Secretariat), he was able to win the support of the Politburo majority. This was vital, for the Soviet leadership is composed of a group of powerful men, each heading huge apparatuses, enjoying a ...”

“... face with wide, rather fishy eyes; her thin limbs are splayed out with flapperish elegance. It may be that her attractions – a fat bundle of love-letters was destroyed when she died, and Mrs Colenbrander finds several witnesses to testify to her ‘aura’ – had less to do with ideal beauty than with loquaciousness and flair. She published more than ...”