“... added, ‘to imagine any more exquisite addition to a seasoned ornithologist’s life list.’ In May 2012, the last courser to reach the British mainland – the first since 1984 – settled on a golf course in Herefordshire, and attracted many hundreds of excited birders. This is not the only such record: a cream-coloured courser was seen on the links of ...”

“... In May​ 1976, two families of Asian immigrants from Malawi – UK passport-holders – were put up in a hotel while social workers decided what to do with their children. The Sun ran it as a front page story: ‘Scandal of £600 a week Asians’. The Mirror followed up by condemning a ‘New Flood of Asians into Britain ...”

“... situation – in which unregulated firms exploit a rapidly increasing employment asymmetry – may well be unsustainable. Most workers are reluctant to give up job security for the ‘independence’ afforded by gig work unless they have to – in a slack labour market, for example, where there is a surplus of labour. When there is a labour shortage, the ...”

“... loud? Perhaps you only thought you did. One person who is under no illusion about comedy – who may never have found it funny in the first place – is the comic. We all know the old joke about the man who goes to the doctor, depressed, and is told to see the famous clown Pagliacci perform: no cure better than laughter. ‘But doctor,’ the man says, ‘I ...”

“... loss, riches, invention, triumph – all justified and interesting avenues. But texts may suggest something else: agreement, for example, or honourable hard work. In Proust’s case, when the topic is memory and chance, the convergences are remarkable. The original text says, ‘Il y a beaucoup de hasard en tout ceci,’ and we get to read, in the ...”

“... inevitable. The would-be poet, essayist, novelist or dramatist, Johnson repeatedly suggests, ‘may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom everyone has a right to attack … To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.’ At once heroic and faintly absurd, this quixotic vision of ...”

“... for the righteous. (As Star is the first to admit, scholars of Jewish and Christian apocalypse may find his texts do not always satisfy their criteria for the apocalyptic.) Apocalypse for the Greeks and Romans was not a call to prepare for a heavenly kingdom, but closer to its modern, colloquial sense and part of a broader philosophical effort to improve ...”

“... but we know she’s in the Women’s Psychopathic Ward and that there’s a baby, who may or may not have died – probably not, because Marthe’s husband, Christopher, brings her a little twist of baby hair. Everything comes to Marthe not through her understanding but through the unmediated chaos of her ...”

“... the dead while at His feet God the Father is creating Adam and Eve.’ Vasari’s doctrinal doubts may be the reason for his faint praise of the composition. In the Mannerist figures, he sees ‘nothing of that skill and singular grace’ Pontormo had previously displayed: Jacopo, it seems to me, has not observed in any single place the organisation of ...”

“... and textual criticism, their classical revival style was profoundly retardataire. Petrarch may have pinned his hopes for literary immortality on works like his Latin epic Africa, but it was his vernacular Canzoniere that launched an international craze for sonnets, keeping the courtly love lyric in vogue for two more centuries. The runaway popularity ...”

“... temperamental difficulties.’ ‘If only Mr Earnest Waller could see me now!’ To the reader it may seem that Mr Waller was doing his best but somewhere in Parr the aggrieved teenager lives on. He is so obviously not lazy or inattentive that it is surprising he still minds. His success comes from exactly the opposite qualities. Precise attention, often to ...”

“... And families whom its air-cooled rear engine Will power to school. I’m saying this That you may take a pride in your work.’ Nervous execs whooshed him away For a photo session.                                        I lost my job In the first redundancies. ‘Does the daffodil have an income allocation ...”

“... of my life. None is good enough to keep Legacy ‘Do words just pop into your head?’ Some may go unexploded. * ‘Have you thought much about your legacy?’ I’m a legacy prisoner. No I’m not. * ‘What do you call precious?’ The precious doesn’t get around much so it stays small. Or it orbits the same small pronoun, a kid on a ...”

“... as the only man who sees. Hence his apparent meekness towards the artist, the hungry artist, we may add, which was noted by Brian Sewell when he and Peter went to David Hockney’s studio. His behaviour and utterance were always colourful, and artists warmed to him, as did taxi-drivers, policemen and women. He once said to me: ‘Patrick, you’ve got a ...”

“... dazzling the nomads with the sunshine on it. They sew up its door flaps with the ropes so no man may crawl through a tiny slit left at the bottom like a Western shirt missing a button. Then on dry highlands of Somalia we set their young girls to go dancing in virginity round the sutured hut: this is their sorrow in private places. They dance in a hurt, stiff ...”