“... national character to be of a ‘heroism almost approaching the sublime’. Although the book was read (and sometimes admired) in Asia and Africa, it was impossible to square its emphatic voluntarism with the idea that global power structures trapped colonised peoples in relations of dependency. Smiles was impatient with structures. ‘It may be of ...”

“... have come more frequently. Michael Schmidt, his colleague on PN Review, has promoted his work; and Donald Davie, in one of those hot flushes that make his criticism so unpredictable and exciting, has declared Sisson’s ‘The Usk’ to be ‘one of the great poems of our time’. Sisson’s critical writing is intelligent, sharp, individual and readable. He ...”

“... stands) or as a star figure in the creation of ‘the city as a work of art’ (the title of Donald Olsen’s book on the subject, published in 1988). Aesthetics were not Louis-Napoleon’s strong point. In the eclectic medley of Second Empire styles, his basic preferences were Modernist; he was a glass-and-iron man, as evidenced by his enthusiasm for ...”

“... was more than just a tyrannical thug. He could be self-deprecatingly humorous, and was deeply read in Arab and foreign literature (Hemingway was a favourite). Once, catching a TV presenter in a grammatical error, he phoned the minister of culture to complain, decreeing a six-month suspension for the offender. His own literary efforts occupied an ...”

“... It’s​ almost impossible to read any work on meritocracy without being reminded that the word was first used in mid-20th-century Britain to portray a dystopian society, a rigid caste system in which a smug elite claimed power on the basis of superior effort and ability. But it was imperial China where meritocratic ideals were first brought to life ...”

“... my dearest dears’) and, having completed it, wrote vertically up the margin: ‘Do not read this letter as a softness. I am hard as fucking nails.’ You wonder how they took so bizarrely double-minded a letter. He could write very tenderly about Dunsmuir, but endorsed Marianne Moore’s description of marriage as ‘being alone together’, and in ...”

“... the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.’ That sounds like Donald Rumsfeld’s rather pithier ‘stuff happens,’ though in Rumsfeld’s case the realisation came too late. Churchill was good at the longue durée. Sometimes. That was his problem. He made a whole lot of predictions, but more of them were wrong than ...”

“... statement, made by a woman who was raped, while unconscious, by a college athlete in Stanford, was read online eight million times. In September, the judge who sentenced the perpetrator to just six months in jail was asked to stand down from his job as a girls’ tennis coach. In a statement, the judge said he did so to ‘protect the players from the ...”

“... Grammar School, Rada and an acting job with a touring Shakespeare company in Ireland, a job with Donald Wolfit, a few years in rep, attention as a playwright for The Room (1957), and The Birthday Party (1958), sudden and extravagant fame for The Caretaker (1960). Pinter married the actress Vivien Merchant in 1956; they had a son, Daniel, in 1958. Pinter ...”

“... the other hand? On the same hand, surely, since the words which follow are the words we have just read. No, on the other hand, because the writer is different, and the meaning of the words is also different. How could Menard, a 20th-century writer using a foreign language, setting his novel in the 16th century, not write differently from the native speaker ...”

“... a supposed British agent in Hungary was played backwards, sounding, according to Bardens, like ‘Donald Duck squeaks’. Meanwhile, a less promising segment on a British millionaire who imported fish from Iceland was scuppered by the last-minute absence of a studio interview; a large dead cod on ice, drying under the TV lights, had to stand in as the main ...”

“... confluence of Quinean and Wittgensteinian lines of thought – found, for example, in the work of Donald Davidson – created a philosophical climate in which the very idea of ‘necessary truth’ was viewed with scepticism. But the climate suddenly changed, thanks to Kripke. Celebrating the entrance of his hero on the philosophical scene, Soames for once ...”

“... the prefaces and acknowledgments were ripped away; if you’d never watched American television or read the US papers; if all you had were the texts and you read them from cover to cover, would you know who Bob Woodward is? No, you wouldn’t, but if you read the jackets, acknowledgments ...”

“... a more permanent exhibit: two earthenware jars. The jars are old and empty now, but you can still read their labels. ‘Sennae P.V.’ one says, ‘Pimento’ the other. Senna is made from the plant Cassia acutifolia which, when swallowed, accelerates the squeezing action of your gut (peristalsis). Your intestine will do all it can to get rid of the stuff ...”

“... when it proved difficult not to join in his merriment. When he officiated at burials, he would read out psalms by the graveside in such a droll manner that some mourners had to stifle their laughter. Bell-ringing was another of his obsessions. He would set off in heavy rain to walk a mile from his house to ring the bells at a church when someone died. As ...”