“... so much of what is hateful about the world since Mrs Thatcher in that gritty hard little word. 2 May. Several of the obituaries of Alan Sillitoe who died last week mention how, when as a child he was being hit by his father, his mother would beg ‘Not on his head. Not on his head.’ My father was a mild man and seldom hit my brother or me but when he did ...”

“... was in many ways a book for its time. Tuchman’s story begins with Edward VII’s funeral on 20 May 1910. The king’s sister-in-law, the empress consort of Russia, Maria Feodorovna, wife of Alexander III, was there. So was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the aged Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. And so was Edward’s least favourite ...”

“... for if she yield What from remorse her soul can shield – Or if she conquer the sore strife May yet have cost her half her life – The wound that ne’er can be laid bare May be the sorest scar to wear – The grief that brings no right to weep May be the one to banish sleep ...”

“... number of fratricidal horrors, of pointing a dreadful finger at the United States. Beware! You too may one day poke your cellphone through the curtains to film shaky clips of fires and explosions on the horizon of your suburb, it may be your feet crunching on the bloodied glass of a bombed café, it ...”

“... both – like Agrippa – predeceased him. Tacitus suggests that Augustus’ third wife, Livia, may have had a ‘secret hand’ in their deaths, though Suetonius in this instance doesn’t stoop to repeating such unsubstantiated rumour. Augustus then adopted their younger brother, Agrippa Postumus (so named because he was born soon after his father’s ...”

“... show you. Does it matterWhy such graceful bells are so called(Seals of a medieval document?)It’s May, and Solomon says: Rise up,My love, my fair one, and come away,Winter is past, the rain is overAnd gone, flowers appear on the earth.A solitary cowslip has survivedUnder our beech the first grass-cutting.The time of the singing of birds is come.Takabutiin the ...”

“... Should you be so foolish As to go skinny-dipping in it. The crows flying and cawing All morning, may have seen a maiden Riding a billy goat – or worse! And now won’t give us ...”

“... even after he explicitly and vindictively repudiated it; indeed, of most of his writing it may be said that it is part of a theology without a God. This background accounts for Heidegger’s truly immense learning, but it also remains what Heidegger in a private letter called ‘a thorn in the flesh’ – the challenge against which he was determined ...”

“... Churchill made in 1947-48. In a speech to a United Europe Meeting at the Albert Hall on 14 May 1947 (not mentioned by Young), Churchill asked: Are we Europeans to become incapable, with all our tropical and colonial dependencies, with all our long-created trading connections, with all that modern production and transportation can do, of even averting ...”

“... The storm broke because of the surprising inroads of the New Criticism into the academy. We may consider the New Criticism rather tame, and appreciate it for introducing a tougher pedagogical stance, but traditional scholars feared that its exclusive emphasis on the specifically literary qualities of novel or poem would isolate these from the ...”

“... imposition of British law in Ireland which actually provoked disorder’. Consistency may be an overrated virtue, but it is a pleasure to find ‘Bomber’ Harris, advocate of the mass bombing of German cities as the way to win the war, thinking during the Palestinian Arab revolt in 1936 that ‘one 250 lb or 500 lb bomb in each village that ...”

“... generosity indeed to double the number!’ A list so nakedly daft obviates detailed scrutiny. It may be worth asking how Lever (born 1806) contrived to predate Jane Austen. If Spender wants to double her number, extensive independent research can be spared her. Five minutes in the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature will give her roughly one ...”

“... and cruel punishment are all supported and in part identified by an immediate sense of what may and may not be done to people, a constraint that precedes cost-benefit calculations.Even though it is possible to construct more or less plausible consequentialist justifications – justifications in terms of long-term ...”

“... have been subject to a special wealth tax to fund a dubious war effort.9 Women, in other words, may in extreme circumstances publicly defend their own sectional interests, but not speak for men or the community as a whole. In general, as one second-century AD guru put it, ‘a woman should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders as she ...”

“... as it was for Beckett. All of his fictional protagonists are humbled and defeated; and while this may be arraigned as unduly pessimistic, it was not the view of the world they taught at Eton. Besides, as Hitchens himself has insisted (ironically enough in light of his own recent changes of political heart), Orwell really did remain on the Left, despite his ...”