“... the Obscure resembles Dickensian black comedy turned absurdist, the epitaphic aspirations of a John Chivery in Little Dorrit chilled to the bone, then the receding acknowledgment of Hades-bound presences in the narrative coda of The Newcomes provides the textual obverse of Amy Dorrit’s confidence in closural inscription, which seems for her the ...”

“... keep a journal at Racedown, but she took it up again at Dove Cottage after William and his brother John had gone off on a visit, leaving her alone a few days. ‘I resolved to write a journal of the time till W and J return and I set about keeping my resolve, because I will not quarrel with myself, and because I shall give William pleasure by it when he comes ...”

“... governess, Miss Tink. Miss Tink, for all the monosyllabic innocence of her name, had a bad cousin, John, who may well also have influenced the child Borges, because he was one of the street-corner ‘hoodlums’ who later fascinated him, partly for being so brave as well as bad, when they fought, and partly because he saw them as ideal compendia of the local ...”

“... Clearly, the latter, though they are one to whom everyone is keen to pretend to defer. When John Reid, the health secretary, was discussing his reasons for not wanting to ban smoking in public places, he said he ‘worried about the unanimity of middle-class health professionals’ on this issue, and wondered what other sources of pleasure were ...”

“... bluff,’ one of the characters says. ‘This is Detroit.’ He says this in the midst of a major piece of bluffing. So why is the title card so disturbing? Partly because of the absence of any indication of which facts are at issue. Given the manifest intention of the film to address urgent political and social questions, the effect of the card is to ...”

“... in 1977 – requires that we take his views seriously, at least on the first of these claims. The major part of the book is devoted to explaining, in non-mathematical language, the new science that the authors see emerging, and to which Prigogine helped to give birth. The ideas are hard, but I think they succeed. There are places, particularly in their ...”

“... them. ‘The monastery of Evesham was suppressed by King Henry VIII … at evensong time,’ John of Alcester recorded, ‘the convent being in the choir at this verse Deposuit potentes, and would not suffer them to make an end.’ Four years into the dissolution, there were few wealthy abbeys left to seize; the very last was Waltham Abbey, on 23 March ...”

“... else would. And we all know that, in a photo-finish, Wallace almost did; or, if we are to believe John Langdon Brooks, really did. If philosophers have been attracted to these historical sites, it is partly because the pattern of simultaneous discovery might seem to substantiate a relatively uncomplicated, inductivist account of scientific innovation. Once ...”

“... later, Cromwell became Lord Protector. Under the Instrument of Government, devised mostly by John Lambert, his mercurial but talented associate, he ruled until his death in September 1658, assisted by a Council of State, in theory chosen by Parliament but in practice chosen by Cromwell himself from among his friends and relations and army comrades. This ...”

“... on lavatory walls. This seems to be the message of ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Up-harsin’, one of John Cheever’s loopy, luminescent, triumphant later stories. The narrator, returning to America after a long absence, enters a stall in the men’s room at Grand Central Station, and there, etched into the marble partition (‘it might have been a giallo ...”

“... fire, killing both parents in the front and wounding one of the six children in the back. The major at the base asked Hondros to delay sending the pictures for ‘a couple of days’, pending some kind of investigation. Hondros’s instinct was to send them and leave it to others to argue the toss. Later that night, with the images safely dispatched, he ...”

“... counterparts in the UK would have claimed was far above the heads of most of their readers. Every major French newspaper, polling agency, political party and radio or television station has its own expert political sociologist. The politicologues quickly realised that they could earn far more writing in newspapers than an academic election study could ever ...”

“... at 60. Thomas Pynchon was a relatively young 51 when he won, but by 1988 already the author of his major works. The Foundation nonetheless took a big punt on the genius of Richard Powers, who was awarded his MacArthur in 1989, aged only 32. I haven’t checked, but he is probably the youngest novelist ever to win a fellowship. Generally unknown in 1989, and ...”

“... awareness of how little of British economic policy is made in Britain; the widening split in both major parties about the kind of future Britain should seek in Europe; a gathering doubt about the point of sustaining an imperial-style monarchy, coupled with what may be the final collapse of the royal family as an even faintly plausible symbol of what is best ...”

“... young European minds will be drawn magnetically to Britain. British universities continue to be major exporters to traditional Anglophone markets, sustaining an imperial authority long after Empire has vanished. Expatriate Britons and natives who have profitably studied in Britain will be found at leading departments everywhere in North America and ...”