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“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Party’s deputy chairman. Then the second disaster: he offers £2000 to a prostitute so that she may go abroad. The deal takes place at Victoria Station, where Archer’s proxy meets the prostitute, who is in league with the News of the World. The story breaks. Archer resigns as deputy chairman, but sues another tabloid, the Daily Star, for libel. The ...”

“... younger royals instinctively understand that they are a sort of super pop-star, and, while they may occasionally complain about it, the fact is that, as any pop star must, they court tabloid attention, are indeed largely tabloid inventions. Their lives seem to be constructions of sheer kitsch, in the approved tabloid style of thunderous bad taste. No wonder ...”

“... Revolutionists (‘Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same’) and gone on to two which, I imagine by Shaw’s intention, expose some of the ambiguity of the utilitarian terms: ‘The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound,’ and ‘The most intolerable pain is produced by ...”

“... if they were to be prevented, there would be far fewer books. I am not confident that either book may be said to be well-written; that question, too, could be thought to arise. In Search of a Past affects not to be written at all – so much as researched, recorded and compiled. But the editorial method which is applied to the data has much to display that is ...”

“... which a paranoid distrust is evident, in which can be read the evergreen message that the deprived may turn out to be depraved, and in which there can be two of someone. Hawksmoor speaks the words of romantic duality, and is in a number of ways a double book. It consists of two alternating narratives, one of which is set in the 18th century and the other in ...”