“... of influential eccentrics such as Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault? Medical discourse may well, as Gill claims, have eroded tolerance of difference and deformity, and it may belong to the history of ‘attempts to define and police the parameters of acceptable diversity’. The scientific study of teratological ...”

“... man that ever ruled England’, but as Malcolm Vale points out in the preface to his new book, it may have been formative in other ways: for all his military success, Henry would fight only one more battle, and there was much more to this king than prowess in arms. The book, which Vale says is ‘not a biography’, has three broad aims. The first is to move ...”

“... sustained IRA violence has shifted Ulster unionist attitudes on this point. Indeed, it may have hardened unionist opposition still further. ETA had even less support in the Basque country for its secessionist aims. And no amount of Hamas terrorism is going to persuade the Israelis to dismantle their state. Al-Qaida thought it had some reason to ...”

“... on manufacturing jobs, on taking the fight to the terrorists, and on sharing the love at home. He may even be able to claim for a while that by offering something to each side of the partisan divide he is starting to bridge it. But all he will be doing is papering over the gaping cracks. Tax cuts coupled with unfunded government spending will fuel inflation ...”

“... literary world, that their deaths are caviar for the general public (or ambrosia for the gods), may underlie a book such as this, but it sits uneasily beside the blatant kitschification of poetry (to which this book queasily may add). Some of the bizarrerie comes with the territory: the lock of hair and other personal ...”

“... claims in his essential new book, claiming that Rohingyas were in Arakan well before 1784, and may even have arrived there before the Buddhist Rakhine. Ibrahim offers a credible genealogy that links Rohingyas to Indo-Aryan groups who arrived from the Ganges Valley as early as 3000 bc. He also charts the evolution of their language and script, which has ...”

“... was spiked, and I don’t have it, or the book, or much memory of the book. Of course, this one may be spiked as well, but I’ve now read Like a Fading Shadow four times, and I can see it will be one of a handful of books I open and start reading – somewhere, anywhere – at least once a year for the rest of my life. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids ...”

“... of Mr Love in Mr Hayter, Miss Joy casts against type, and finds happiness. Changing your name may be what restores you to yourself. Miss Joy is truly joyful in the end, by virtue of becoming Mrs Hayter. There is a romantic novel to be glimpsed in this stanza: how, we might ask, did Miss Joy part company with Mr Love? Did she only choose him, but not marry ...”

“... of the prize (in his acceptance speech he credited the role Anthony Minghella’s film adaptation may have played in that result). These novels, really, are romances, in the sense that everything that happens in them is charged with magic, nothing is merely ordinary or redundant, everything finally connects together inside some larger esoteric scheme – even ...”

“... Della is the furthest thing available to literature from a prostitute, whatever that thing may be. Jack, though fallen, is careful to free himself of base sexual intent. They share a love of poetry. Her presence beside him reminds him of Milton’s embracing angels: ‘total they mix, union of pure with pure.’ They sit through the night among the ...”

“... considers a tangle of clothes on the floor, brushing aside the thought that he may have just raped one of his students: ‘After the storm, he thinks: straight out of George Grosz.’ In Pasolini’s Porcile, the industrialist Herr Klotz lies in bed, worried he’s losing his son to left-wing radicalism. ‘The days of Grosz and Brecht are ...”

“... a fictional world of horror.The story involves a supernatural force called the Darkness, which may provide the secret of immortality if placated with enough blood. Its existence is known only to a group of ‘Initiates’ – the Order, whose members are overwhelmingly part of the ruling class. The Order needs mediums to access the Darkness, and it has ...”

“... main plot.The life and works of the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) may serve as an epitome. After studying mathematics, Quetelet persuaded the Belgian Government to send him to Paris to study astronomy with Pierre-Simon de Laplace, the acknowledged doyen of the discipline. There he imbibed not only Laplace’s celestial ...”

“... of course: ‘Liberty versus Communism; Reagan-Bush ’84.’ And even today, whatever people may think in other regions of the United States, Miami remains unrepentantly, exuberantly Reagan country. Indeed, what is most remarkable about Cuban Miami is that here may be found the staunchest of the right-wing true ...”

“... life peer who could convincingly be cast in the role of even the feeblest village Hampden. Peers may speechify to their hearts’ content, but the party which controls the House of Commons can reverse any defeat inflicted on it in the House of Lords as it pleases. If it doesn’t, it’s nothing to do with respect for individual liberty or the public ...”