“... scepticism so deep that for some time he refused to believe that Gorbachev was ‘for real’, and may have had some influence in persuading members of the Reagan and Bush Administrations of his view. Though I have heard him admit that this was a mistake, it is a view which many Russians still hold, and his holding of it for so long demonstrates his close ...”

“... The world, he says at the end of The Genesis of Secrecy (1979), ‘is our beloved codex’: We may not see it, as Dante did, in perfect order, gathered by love into one volume, but we do, living as reading, like to think of it as a place where we can travel back and forth at will, divining congruences, conjunctions, opposites; extracting secrets from its ...”

“... was stimulated by the pain of absence (for which Lady Bute, fostering her husband’s ambition, may have been secretly grateful). Lady Mary returned to England only after her husband’s death in 1761; she died a year later of breast cancer. In her lifetime she was the victim of many covert sneers and attacks, which redoubled after she did the scandalous ...”

“... in some transfigured form). The volume to hand, however, suggests 1) that the idea of the CD-ROM may be more subversive and exciting than its still impoverished reality, encaged in its plastic frame, and 2) that the ‘book’ may well be better exploded, if I can put it that way, by the stimulation and vigorous ...”

“... stay with all of us for the rest of our lives and indeed, at the present rate of attrition, it may be something that will only survive in the memory. The combined effect of incessant bombardment with the onset of a Balkan winter may snuff out everything I saw. On a paved street in the centre of town, near the Eternal ...”

“... other hand, Madame Magritte’s corpse, after its recovery, spent a night in the house: Magritte may have seen her face covered with a sheet to conceal the effect of 17 days’ submersion in the polluted waters of an industrial river. His uncle, who had identified her, could have told him that her face was covered to avoid having to describe her ...”

“... to the other, it cannot seriously be held that they constitute a single nation, but FitzGerald may have come as close to reality in his use of such terms as is consistent with political survival in the Republic. The author recognises that, as a condition for unity by consent, the Republic should ‘provide the same civil liberties in the whole island as at ...”

“... retelling of the tangled tale of Tibet and its longstanding relationship with China that things may be yet more complex than his seven hundred pages allow for, since he reads neither Chinese nor Tibetan, and depends for the most part on the careful use of what is already available in English. This is nothing new: the 1993 International Conference of Lawyers ...”

“... profession. Time has not decided the matter. A row of paintings by Copley, Hoppner and Opie may be dashing but you can tire of them before you are sated with Vigée Le Brun’s pretty frocks and bright eyes. And of these there is no shortage: she was prolific. She drove herself and sometimes she said she had spread herself too thin, but it is pretty ...”

“... Geof instead. Helen and Jo, it seems, don’t expect to live stupidly ever after.Helen and Jo may have low expectations but they have strong desires – for romance, sex, fun, colour, ‘a taste of honey’. Men offer that, if only fleetingly, and Helen and Jo grab it with both hands. ‘Listen, love, I’m old enough to be your mother,’ Helen tells ...”

“... heard of it recently, possibly because officials recognise that the problems with the technology may be insurmountable. In a scramjet engine, air passes through the engine at supersonic speed and is ignited by the fuel to generate thrust. But the slightest perturbation in the airflow – as during manoeuvres – leads to shockwave disruption in the smooth ...”

“... sometime after 14 February 1479, when he dictated his will ‘lying ill in bed’, and before 11 May, when the will was opened and read. He would have been about fifty. In November that year, his widow, Giovanna Cuminella, married a Messinese notary. The San Cassiano altarpiece (1475-76). The Venetian evidence apart, these fragments give little insight ...”

“... right’s a harmless Charybdis!’To surprise, to seize. A young style favours conquest – that may also be what the middle-aged Auden was protesting about. But there’s no doubt that O’Hara’s poetry, rather than wearing out its welcome, has continued to conquer audiences. He’s just about become a cliché: of the insouciantly out gay poet, the ...”

“... the Dardanelles?’ they used to shout at him whenever he got up in Parliament – though that may have been unfair: most of the government and the high command, including Kitchener, were initially behind him. Kitchener’s reputation ended up pretty battered too, though he was drowned before it became a problem. Gallipoli has become one of those military ...”

“... of foreign capital to Britain, while leaving the EU is likely to accelerate an outflow that may dwarf the UK’s relatively modest net contribution to the EU budget. So going back to 1392 does not seem like a very sensible answer to our predicament. And how strange it is at this late date to see the defunct Act in Restraint of Appeals held up for our ...”