“... than Nazi Germany or even Franco’s Spain. One cannot admit to being bored with the problem but may wonder what else there is to say. In A Sport of Nature Miss Gordimer breaks out of the enclave with a novel about a Jewish girl who makes love to black Africans, travels around the world and returns to her homeland, ‘the new African state that used to be ...”

“... modern blockbuster, is over six hundred and fifty pages long), a dimly observable possibility that may have to be confronted if things really get out of hand. Fortunately for yarn-lovers everywhere, they don’t. The war that Clancy has imagined is fought, from its beginning in a Soviet sneak attack across the Fulda Gap to its end in a settlement negotiated by ...”

“... Readers making their way through Michael Bracewell’s latest novel may gradually become aware of a small but persistent ache: it comes of the author nudging them in the ribs. There is no chance of being caught napping during the various crises and cruces of The Conclave because Bracewell signposts them all with a diligence and clarity that would not disgrace a sightseeing guide ...”

“... thejaymakesanswerasthemagpiechatters andalltheairisfilledwithpleasantnoiseofwaters It may be asked how readers were supposed to tell that ‘allnight’ at the end of the first line belonged to ‘aroaringinthewind’ rather than ‘theraincameheavily’, or that ‘inthedistantwoods’ belonged to ‘thebirdsaresinging’ rather than ...”

“... tide of lives, from the tenderness I saw in thousands of eyes watching me together. This message may not come to all poets, but anyone who has felt it will keep it in his heart, will work it into his poems. Luis Poirot’s photographic study of Neruda and Nerudiana was originally published, in a limited edition, in Chile in 1986, during the Pinochet ...”

“... omens of prosperity or ruin to come are sought in every change ... any of the world’s details may contain the one thing that above all else you will regret not knowing.’ In Moo Smiley moves from the claustrophobic confines of family life to the wide open spaces of a Midwestern agricultural college, trading dark drama for four hundred pages of proficient ...”

“... Ehrlich’s detachment from her body introduces a new phase in her attempts at survival. Her mouth may not obey her instructions, but this failure enables her to separate her idea of herself from her suffering body, so that the woman who wishes to laugh is no longer the woman dying, but a friend at the bedside of that woman. This new attitude helps ...”

“... disgracefully cowardly circumstances, when he was ejected by the then chairman of selectors, Peter May. It is necessary to know his approach to captaincy, which, as seen from the periphery, was the equivalent of riding a bike with your feet on the handlebars (he would argue that provided you don’t crash you would still get to the bottom of the hill this ...”

“... James thought that the fear of open spaces could be due to a resurrection of an instinct ‘which may in some of our more remote ancestors have had a permanent and ... useful part to play’. Freud too saw phobias as having to do with self-protection, but where for James the open space evokes evolutionary memory, for Freud it evokes personal memory, and the ...”

“... I have heard people say that the Budget was a bore. This may be true for those who had to listen to it or for those who are interested in minutiae. But as one interested primarily in economic strategy, I cannot remember a more intriguing situation. How can it possibly be right to propose a huge tax increase for next year, and an even larger one for the year after that, when by general consent unemployment is going to be in the region of three million and rising? I am going to argue that this Budget only makes sense on very special assumptions about the performance of the economy; and that if, a year from now, the situation is broadly unchanged – if, that is, output has not changed much, with unemployment still around three million and the balance of payments not in serious deficit – it will be every bit as wrong to raise taxes then as it would now ...”

“... vine species which were resistant to the disease. The choice was by no means automatic. Hybrids may raise eyebrows in France today – the only hybrid permitted for the production of appellation contrôlée wines is Baco 22A in Armagnac and its use is being phased out – but they had many advocates in the immediate post-phylloxera world. Grape-growers were ...”

“... novel, being shorter, darker and less furiously though still adequately inventive. Its economy may shock some folk, for Peter Carey is known to be an exuberant novelist, copious, various and fantastic. It is possible to admire his books for their lack of respect for boundaries, for the qualities they share with the work of modern Latin American ...”

“... in the 1850s, of a ‘milieu intérieur’: ‘All of the vital mechanisms, however varied they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity of the conditions of life in the internal environment . . . The stability of the internal environment is the condition for the free and independent life.’Our bodies can only maintain homeostasis within ...”

“... his speech outside Number Ten on 7 July, his sole political resignation had been from Theresa May’s cabinet in 2018, the opening gambit in his successful campaign to take her job. In 2004, when his lies about his affair with Petronella Wyatt and her subsequent abortion were exposed, he refused Michael Howard’s order that he resign as a shadow ...”

“... illegal (he was found to have suppressed expert reports that showed his plans were unviable). He may have thought that the removal of Kenneth Clarke, Dominic Grieve and (perhaps) William Hague from the cabinet left the field clear for his long promised assault on human rights law. Instead, he lost any respectable cover for the Conservative Party’s sinister ...”