“... We were​ an inseparable couple, my mother and I. Our address was: The White House, Hempton Green, nr Fakenham, Norfolk. Here we stove in the shells of our breakfast eggs with teaspoons to prevent witches from using them as boats (the eggs came from Mrs Atherton, who helped my mother in the house and kept chickens at her nearby cottage ...”

“... Mary Fiddler, a fine blooming lass of 18, her – is like silk itself, and bubbles as white as snow; she is just in her prime, and fit for business, she is broke in this spring, by a well-known gentleman of the turf. Her movements are regular, her pace elegant, and her action is good: and when you mount her, she begins to f—k away to the tune of the ‘Dandy O ...”

“... His book, which Chua helped him to get published, is a kind of counterpart: why does the American white working class produce so many losers? Particularly dysfunctional, he argues, are his own people – the ‘Scots-Irish hillbillies’ who settled in Eastern Kentucky. He thinks that it wasn’t only his mother who ‘lacked even a modicum of temper ...”

“... a ravine.AntoniaWhen the singer upstairs starts her scales Antonia goes out walking. There is new white snow over dark slush and mirroring blue-grey skies. To be kissed by something more than the raw sunset wind is what all the old men in Beckett long for too, she thinks, and we have the same overcoat.TobyhannaI have a problem, he says, I talk too ...”

“... together. Elena was now Helen, Mummy not Mami; Papa became Daddy; the boys were still Donald and Peter, of course, but they had far fewer words at their disposal by which to express themselves. They were now British – British refugees, to be exact – not just because their identity documents said so, but because their survival depended on it. And thus ...”

“... of political ideas and practice? Fascism, National Socialism, Bolshevism, anarchism, red terror, white terror, civil war. What heroes has the Continent produced in our century? Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco. Beside them those who did quiet good, like Tomas Masaryk or Henri Dunant, shone rather palely. Europe did not seem to be setting attractive ...”

“... in 1911. The novel ends on Christmas Day, when the tunnel is blown up by Fenians: Beyond the white cliffs, far in the rainy distance, five gouts of flame burst in succession and an instant later the great steel Tunnel doors were blown out in a single stunning concussion, and sailed like monstrous plates half across the valley. The Tunnel disappeared into ...”

“... In order to keep alive some vestige of the viewer-must-contribute principle, the model is white. Contemporary changes in methods of architectural presentation accompany what they prefigured in the late 18th century: a collapse in official taste. The norms which resulted in almost all 18th-century buildings being in some sense Classical worked no more ...”

“... the most prominent prize for first novels in Australia; it was described by David Marr, Patrick White’s biographer, as ‘astonishingly talented’, and by Jill Kitson of the ABC as ‘a searingly truthful account of terrible wartime deeds that is also an imaginative work of extraordinary redemptive power’. Assuming, as we all did, that the novel ...”

“... to convince his boss of the success of one of his skin grafts, a graft from a black animal onto a white mouse, by touching up the graft with a black felt pen. One can imagine the surprise of a technician upon finding out that this particular skin graft was soluble in alcohol. Summerlin was suspended instantly from work on full pay ($40,000), ostensibly to ...”

“... the war, which generated an identity of interest between professional groups – public servants, white-collar workers – and the more traditionally organised manual workers, and which was, in the course of time, to enhance the political power and influence of the trade-union movement more than anything else. Sir Denis takes up the story in more detailed ...”

“... rooms and physical types he shows, but it was enough. Beside The Women of Algiers, Gérôme’s white slaves are as unconvincing as Alma Tadema’s Roman girls, and for the same reason: their attractions are calculated by eyes which are neither Roman nor North African. One tends to see what one knows and Gérôme knew what a pretty French girl looked ...”

“... us. I suspect that, among the stories that Kafka or his Dog had in mind, were those of Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826). At all events, Kafka called Hebel’s ‘Unexpected Reunion’ the ‘most wonderful story in the world’, and the judgment does not strike one as absurd. Hebel’s stories, or parables, first appeared in the Lutheran almanac for the ...”

“... networks with the same first indications of an American strike against Libya. In New York, I watch Peter Jennings on ABC largely as a matter of habit, although the other anchormen seem to produce roughly the same results. Jennings opened by announcing that something was happening in Tripoli; then he passed things over to two correspondents there who, from ...”

“... provides an audio commentary. And there are lots of educational backups, some, like lectures by Peter Ackroyd and Tom Paulin, now over, others, including various conferences and courses, still to come. The most visible, and in some ways the most instructive of the exhibits are those which demonstrate Blake’s technical innovations. Only one of his ...”