“... range of reference, forcefully written and fairly eccentric, at times indeed slightly unhinged. It may well make him rich and famous, in the manner of Allan Bloom, Samuel Huntingdon and other purveyors of the slightly unhinged academic diagnostic blockbuster. But the arguments he musters and the warnings he issues are curiously similar to those that have been ...”

“... harbour. Tears of joy? Relief? Despair? The book he is reportedly writing in his French retreat may tell us; meanwhile we can only guess. The peaceful transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to China – all things considered, the unlikeliest end any empire ever had – went off without a visible hitch. Almost every day of his five-year ...”

“... now, not during this period of mourning. I formed the impression while I was in Egypt that Dodi may have been a little backward – ‘simple’ was a word I heard quite often used – and that he conformed to some familiar image of the feckless first-born son of a rich father. Mohamed would always have bankrolled him, people said, if only in order to ...”

“... result: self-censorship. We stay out of trouble by gagging ourselves. Among the few motives that may strengthen the power of resistance is the consciousness of having been deeply wrong oneself, either regarding some abstract question or in personal or public life. Another motive of resistance occasionally pitches in: a radical, quasi-physical horror of ...”

“... churchyards, churches, crypts, cemeteries, derelict houses. They worship within a circle which may be drawn or marked on the ground or made with string or twine. Their rites include prayers and chants to Satan, but they also carry out ‘child sexual and physical abuse, smearing and consumption of body substances (blood, faeces, semen and urine) and sexual ...”

“... the place,’ James wrote, ‘had seemed cruel to the poor little dressmaker outside, it may be believed that it did not strike her as an abode of mercy while she pursued her devious way into the circular shafts of cells … there were walls within walls and galleries on top of galleries; even the daylight lost its colour.’Millbank Prison had ...”

“... baking Craigleith stone, to bank away to the airish Firth and Inchkeith Island, the Ferry and the May. I watch you watching jugglers; the obligatory lovers, and a snake-woman swallowing a sword. You are turning heliotropic in this acropolis of light, barely breaking sweat. Lifting your hands to your hair a drop runnels down under one arm to its cup and the ...”

“... 31 of the International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees recognises that refugees may be obliged to use illicit means of entry into a safe country – just as they may have to evade customs and immigration checks to get out of their own – and requires that host countries ‘shall not impose penalties’ on ...”

“... The planet may have tilted, if only a hint when the shelf of cloud burnt angrily before dusk           jack-o’-lantern stuff her hair the colour of her coat, fallwear       ******* The wet stain her bathing-suit left on the bench           the shape of Bolivia, drying, drying into atol ...”

“... A sheep nibbling earth’s firstlings is my spirit that prays for the day Christ may stoop me as a cooper denies his timber’s nature – for two years in this windy eye of God I have wrestled and prayed against myself and you ask if I have the time for poems ... Your letter brought me tears, and I was grateful. Oppression, expression, these are words but lack the radish-bite of right words for two years in the flinty field of etymology ...”

“... and never quite. But further, further still: even the painter must be destroyed in order that one may become the ...”

“... the radiant, divergent final paragraph, is to be invaded or colonised: hanging on to your own life may mean the excommunication of all others. Relying on the complexity of its narrative threading, on detail, voice and perspective, the story offers one further aesthetic surprise: a range of sympathy capable of embracing both the mother’s brave self-delusion ...”

“... years, Wharton must be regarded as immortal. As far as I know, I never met either, although I may have swapped punches or half-pints with one or other in the mid-Fifties, when I was one of the Daily Express interlopers in the back bar of the King and Keys. But what they both describe is the story of my life as well as theirs. Both books tell the story of ...”

“... conform. In such an environment gossip is an instrument with real teeth: your job and your home may depend upon it. Is gossip still a killer in the Western world? Liberalism has gone to a lot of trouble to draw its teeth, and to make sure that whatever you do you won’t have to suffer for it physically at society’s hands. In her novel The Groves of ...”

“... meaning etc, there will be no flow of intention, meaning, believing, hoping etc going on. The dog may respond to the behaviourist, but the behaviourist won’t respond to the dog’s response ... The behaviourist’s dog will not only seem stupid: she will be stupid. This testimony should not come as a surprise. There have been plenty of others like it ...”