“... Why must we exist in perpetual uncertainty (only ended by death) as to whether we are well or ill? John Donne speaks of illness as an invader, which sets up a kingdom and conceals ‘secrets of State, by which it will proceed, and not be bound to declare them’. So profound are the effects of the belief that we are ill that hypochondria must be seen as a ...”

“... said of his meal with Giscard, ‘a myth hunter … must hunt everywhere.’ That lunch, which took place in a flat in the Marais on 25 February 1980, with Lang doing the cooking, apparently went quite well. But then Barthes, en route back to his office, walked into the path of a laundry van, which left him unconscious and bleeding from the nose. He ...”

“... is following Gramsci’s example within one’s own society.’ In 2006, again in the LRB, he took the same attitude towards Marx, suggesting that Marx and Engels’s Rhineland origins was the key to their interpretation of capitalism’s development: Marxism was ‘a Rhineland-based diversion of global history, mistaken for the mainstream during a ...”

“... crisis, the corporation had to sell in order to keep building – and, once Thatcher’s policies took hold, at a price well below market rates. Renters, unsurprisingly, knew a good deal when they saw it; very quickly, the balance between owners and renters turned around. In 1979, 41 per cent of houses in Milton Keynes were owner-occupied; four years later ...”

“... directly at Mrs Touchet. Not a nice smile. A sharp smile, with a threat in it. Then bent down, took the second pail, and walked off towards the pantry, past all the kitchen drawers so full of sharp and threatening things.Such spiky delights. The passage follows a description of a group of servant children – ‘he’ is a young Black servant – taking ...”

“... in some way that might be free from (and free them from) the taint of empire. Oxfam in particular took advantage of a new culture of affluence and of the enthusiasm of (mostly female) volunteers to open charity shops on high streets – shops that could cater to economically diverse customers while also funnelling support to Oxfam’s overseas ...”

“... talking seriously to their US counterparts, including Cold War scholars such as Melvyn Leffler and John Gaddis. Radchenko, more than twenty years younger and so essentially post-Soviet, arrived in the US as an exchange student (improbably, from the island of Sakhalin in the Pacific), wrote a PhD on Sino-Soviet relations under the supervision of Odd Arne Westad ...”

“... their slaves, their excesses of despotism. At the same time even a light-hearted impresario like John Rich was aiming at targets closer to home, as Bridget Orr explains in an essay on the Oriental theatre. But it was the example of Scheherazade that the writers who flocked to ventriloquise Oriental tale-tellers took to ...”

“... for Lewis has a story-book understanding of what life ought to be. ‘Already he perceived what he took to be a natural order: female company at the close of a day dedicated to masculine patterns of endeavour.’ Aspiring to be a hero within the confines of his muted routines, this unlikely prince is looking for a princess. His ageing mother clearly won’t do ...”

“... most people to grasp how mathematicians think at the best of times, and even more so when, like John Clearwater, they’re straining to discover formulae which will irreversibly enlarge our understanding of how life works. Tired of game theory, he has moved on to the study of turbulence and discontinuity; his ambition is to find ‘a simple algorithm that ...”

“... have taken their cut. A Room with a View, for example, cost £2.3 million to make, and took about £7 million in US rentals. The Mission cost almost £17 million and brought in about £4.5 million in US rentals. Revolution cost around £19 million, and brought in around £600,000. This way of thinking is pretty alien to most movie-goers who cannot ...”

“... Melchior and Peregrine are the twin sons of the Victorian actor-manager Ranulph Hazard, who took his company of travelling Shakespearians all over the British Empire and the United states. They came to Gun Barrel, Texas, with such éclat that the town was renamed Hazard, Texas, with young Peregrine as its honorary sheriff, though this was long before ...”

“... Hawk’, but not because he wished to suggest any hint of beakiness. His predecessor had been John Squire, whose pseudonym was ‘Solomon Eagle’. It is easy enough to see why, for such as Leavis, MacCarthy might be perceived as the apotheosis of indolent metropolitan bookman-ship. Scrutiny, after all, was in some measure aimed as a ‘serious’ riposte ...”

“... a book published in 1990, the American historian Paul Breines argues that a significant change took place in the self-image of the American Jew after 1967. Breines examined films, books and magazines in which American Jews had traditionally portrayed themselves as mild, bookish and wise human beings, not given to retaliation or unprovoked violence. After ...”

“... mid-Atlantic accents instead of Alcott’s Yankee vernacular. Laurie’s grandfather is played by John Neville, and the scenes, whether meant for Concord, Boston or New York, have that interchangeable Merchant/Ivory, Masterpiece Theatre look. The Anglo-American effect isn’t totally off base. Both ‘Marmee’ and Louisa herself thought of the Alcott sisters ...”