“... quite a restricted way. How does the use of sacrifice fit the culture of those who practise it? It may be an important part of some cultural ritual; it may be approved as beneficent, or deplored as a regression to a past state of barbarism. Attitudes towards it may derive from a cultural ...”

“... August. His object is to make what he calls a ‘preliminary’ case – a tentative case that may, in the end, be defeated by inescapable realities – for a socialist alternative. Is it desirable, he asks, and if desirable is it feasible, to construct a society driven by something other than predation, which doesn’t answer to the ...”

“... beholder’s situation. (Oddly, no one seems to have considered the influence that the telescope may have had, at some level, in the making and reception of the painting, even though telescopes had recently become popular at the seaside.) William Holman Hunt’s ‘Rienzi Vowing to Obtain Justice’ (1849). Art historians are now more than ever ...”

“... from the old ones, which have set themselves, in defence, to expanding their book sections, and may in desperation have to turn their hand to the task of discovering and developing new writers to fill their vacant spaces. It would be good if this were to send up the ratio of books reviewed to books published. But that won’t happen. Most books will remain ...”

“... How and why do some writers’ characters live from the word go? It may not be necessary that they should; it may not even be to the writer’s purpose and advantage. Shakespeare’s minor characters often have a life which the drama as such has no real use for and no way to deal with ...”

“... because some people are prodigies in one and mere plodders in the other. But the two activities may depend on certain shared mechanisms. For example, both may rely on a common memory for immediate information, such as the beat of the bar or the numbers to be multiplied. Both may depend ...”

“... outside attempts to interfere.’ Both statements are false, and calculated to mislead. But they may well flow from a genuine failure on the part of South Africa’s ruling oligarchy to understand the depth and breadth of that country’s continuing crisis. The Government has for several years believed that it could alter South Africa from above, moderating ...”

“... past – in the nearer distances and the clearer mysteries, the marks and signs of a world we may reach over to as by making a long arm we grasp an object at the other end of our own table ... We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.’ Thus Henry James in the Preface to The Aspern Papers, the germ ...”

“... is a rule of law,’ Justice Berkeley said, ‘and a rule of government, and things that may not be done by the rule of law may be done by the rule of government.’ It took the rest of the 17th century – a civil war, the king’s execution, the implosion of the republic, the restoration of the monarchy and the ...”

“... Defence Yearbook Michael Clarke repeats what everyone knows: although ‘the Army, in particular, may lament the fact that Bosnia – like the Northern Ireland commitment – detracts from the real business of training for a major war, the fact is that the prospect of major war is now very low and the likelihood of more Bosnias is becoming higher.’ The ...”

“... Long-term ‘endings of an era’ tend nowadays to be announced with remarkable confidence. This may even be the case with an issue as controversial as the ending of territorial imperialism, truly a large affair. Yet there is much to suggest that it is ending, and the appearance of two large histories of Christianity in Africa, the first of their kind on any such scale, can be seen as another signal of this: a summing-up has evidently come to seem possible as well as desirable ...”

“... In sum, these achievements amount to one of the greatest of all scientific revolutions (it may turn out to be the greatest). Yet, by an interesting irony, Schrödinger’s great hope, that new physical principles would emerge, has so far been unfulfilled. The overwhelming message of molecular biology is the particularity of molecular systems: while we ...”

“... the minger and the tattooed man and the wheelchair couple and the Scottish Gymnastics Display Team may remember me as the little, flushed, balding fellow in jumbo cords with egg mayonnaise in his beard, alternately squatting and standing, clutching a cup of coffee and trying to read Anthony Powell: A Life, the book with the black and white photo of a grumpy ...”

“... or history in Britain, only the clever public schoolboy’s occasional smart remarks. Although it may be early to judge, since in future instalments the characters may mature in unexpected ways, it does seem from the hares being started here that the insights to be pursued will be fairly familiar from the ...”

“... If you are already aware of John Gray (1866-1934), you may well have a particular interest in the 1890s, or in certain aspects of Catholicism.* You may have fleetingly met the name in period biographies – Beardsley’s, Yeats’s, Wilde’s. Wasn’t Gray supposed to be model for ‘Dorian’? Or you may simply have come across an extraordinary poem called ‘The Flying Fish’, which more than anything has roused and tantalised curiosity ...”