“... in public sophistication. Public banding, which articulates the contractarian spirit identified in David Miller’s Queen’s Rebels (1978), has taken varied forms. An unexpected aspect of the present crisis has been the non-emergence of this respectable vigilantism despite Paisley’s repeated efforts to flourish a ‘third ...”

“... every sign of exemplifying Cyril Connolly’s ‘theory of permanent adolescence’. A nasty David Benedictus-like episode, with prefect ‘Dick’ going too far in wielding the Ground Ash, leads to a new school mandate for the lighter but more efficient cane: much relish here in the details. ‘Dick’ moans to Stephen Spender: ‘Even if I become prime ...”

“... book (about 260,000 words by my rough count), and one has the prospect of two more long books (the David Ellis and Mark Kinkead-Weekes ones) looming up awesomely over the first crest: but Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce was a very long book indeed, and it gripped one from start to finish. I think the answer may be, partly, that a biography simply has to have a ...”

“... and outer chaos is such that one occasionally imagines it could be easily made into a movie (by David Mamet, perhaps, another connoisseur of the disturbing set-up), but then come such wonderful moments as the following, when Nashe and the gambler Pozzi arrive for the big game:Nashe put the car into neutral, applied the emergency brake, and climbed out to ...”

“... that is warm with your loving:/Cold on your shuddering foot Lethe’s dread water will lap’ (David Luke’s translation). After two years’ absence, and after reimbursing Faustina quite generously, Goethe returned – or was recalled – to Weimar, to a lighter workload, with no specific responsibilities, and an increased stipend. In Frau von Stein’s ...”

“... till the opera’s final moments? Derrida’s dullest segment was a discussion of title – Fr. titre – and the titration of alloys which ‘gave title’ to money. Derrida, perspiring a little, seemed to be driving harder than usual, mispronouncing more words. Was he reacting to the audience’s uneasiness? Only one person had left Derrida I; there ...”

“... do at the ceremony, in deference to his orthodox kinsmen. This was in 1978, shortly after the Camp David Accords with the Egyptian Government of Sadat. Shepherd was one of those alarmed by Israel’s new right-wing government, headed by Menachem Begin: religious parties allied themselves with the right-wingers, rejecting Labour and the old ...”

“... a considerable post-war phenomenon, the cause of new cultural divides and personal tensions, as David Mercer’s television plays of the Sixties so clearly portrayed. For Glasser, the Sixties represented nothing much more than a ‘rejection of cultural tradition’, a nihilism ‘soon to become a badge of conformity’. His entry into the English ...”

“... exactly what lies gathering dust in the Columbia vaults. The most entrancing of these is ‘Santa Fe’ from the Basement Tapes sessions, which offers an example of the gift for improvisation that is so central to Dylan’s genius. Allen Ginsberg, among many others, has marvelled at Dylan’s ability to compose spontaneously at the microphone, suggesting that ...”

“... of the ‘National Bibliographic Service Organisational Chart’; ‘Boston Spa Director General David Russon viewing new digital storage and transmission equipment’ (‘Director General’! – Gogol lives); the conveyor channels of the new ‘Mechanical Book Handling System’ (tactfully, the Electric Dutch shelves which ran amok compacting their ...”

“... demonstrated, the line between genuine heterodoxy and implicit irreligion is hard to draw. Even David Hume, sharpest and most sophisticated of unbelievers, is being shown to have refined his objections in the context of a variety of religious cultures, French Catholic, Huguenot, Reformed Dutch, Irish as well as Scots Presbyterian, and with a nice awareness ...”

“... to Arab provocations. The political climate was thus generally conducive to the use of force. David Ben-Gurion, a peppery and combative little fellow, personified this militant national mood. His instinct was to let the military have their head and to sidestep the slow-moving machinery of the United Nations. In Hebrew the UN is called Oom, and Ben-Gurion ...”

“... Perhaps in a sweetheart ‘democratic’ union prepared in advance by some Bulldog Drummond like David Hart.I read Milne’s book with a faint blush of shame because, not having paid daily attention to the strike and not having much liked Scargill when I met him. I had not disbelieved everything I read about the union funds. Furthermore, some of the bylines ...”

“... the Will and five days after his promised suicide: In a dispute concerning the character of David, Mr — argued that he must be a holy man, from the strains of piety that breathe through his whole works – I being of a contrary opinion, and knowing that a great genius can effect anything, endeavouring in the foregoing Poems to represent an ...”

“... with biographical detail and perspicacious literary judgment. His model was Sainte-Beuve who, as F.W. Dupee, another remarkable American Sainte-Beuvian, used to say, enabled Wilson not only to be a literary portraitist but also to give you the impression that he was discovering books and authors as if for the first time. This sense of excitement ...”