“... the Nicene Creed, which in its English version contains the sentence ‘On the third day, [Jesus] rose again, according to the Scriptures.’ That sounds on a modern reading like a clear statement of unmediated supernatural revelation: a story of a supernatural event, described in sacred books, the Gospels of the New Testament. That is not what the text ...”

“... of those Euro-best-sellers such as Patrick Susskind’s Perfume and Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose that seem, to some British critics, to spring from an EEC conspiracy to thwart exports of genuine, wholesome, straightforward British fiction the same way French farmers block the entry of English lamb. However, Yugoslavia is not a member of the Common ...”

“... according to the Bettelheim principle, but dies, leaving a flower behind her – St Joseph’s rose. Sendak would probably argue that children need to face the reality of death: but the confrontation is here made altogether queasy – and, yes, sentimental – by a miasma of piety. In spite of their veneration for the originating Volk, the Grimms ...”

“... An elderly woman leaving a swimming-pool makes a young woman’s gesture of goodbye:   Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly coloured ball to her lover ... The instant she turned, smiled and waved ... she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in ...”

“... can be truly enlightening, as in the chapter which deals with the Irish rebellion of 1798. In France, just before the Revolution, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Emily’s son, converted to Republicanism. It was called ‘the levelling movement’ by Lady Emily, the last person one can imagine being levelled, who placidly remarked: ‘I think it charming to hear ...”

“... the Bull of Revesby). His wife was 9 stone 6 in 1781 and 13 stone 12 in 1794. His sister Sophia rose from 11 stone 8 in 1778 to 14 stone 3 in 1794. When Banks was well into his seventies a drunken coachman overturned the carriage in which this substantial trio were travelling. ‘We were obliged,’ Banks wrote, ‘to lie very uneasily at the bottom of the ...”

“... served as usual with French bread, warm croissant, café au lait and Fort Dauphin’s speciality, rose-pink papaya. The terrace is set about with hibiscus and orchids. A ten-foot poinsettia tree holds both cream-coloured and scarlet flowers over my head. In front of me spreads the great fan of a Traveller’s Palm, symbol of Madagascar. Wendy, my colleague ...”

“... seen in England and that the same fleecy cirrocumulus that presaged fair weather in England and France augured heavy rain in Italy. Studied close up by local observers, nature looked motley, however hard leading scientists in London and Paris pressed for standardised data that could be distilled into generalisations about weather everywhere and always. The ...”

“... Israel’s destruction of Palestine. The campaign (which has been quite successful in Germany and France) was launched after the reinvasion of the West Bank three years ago, after the devastation of Jenin (which capitulated, to the great pride of the Israeli army, on Holocaust Day 2002). The language that pro-Israelis and representatives of Israel use to ...”

“... with him, charged with the intention to ‘corrupt and debauch’ her. Colonel Forbes fled to France, and a £50 reward was offered for information leading to his arrest, together with a description: ‘about 64 years of age, five feet nine or ten high, florid complexion, stout made, grey hair, thick bushy whiskers, which he sometimes dyes, walks very ...”

“... at risk of famine, and 900,000 children were at critical risk. As the cost of a 25 kg bag of wheat rose to $415, there were stories of Palestinians eating grass. People I spoke to who had left Gaza told me that their relatives were going without food for days on end. As the situation deteriorated, there were reports of looting. Israel has repeatedly blamed ...”

“... almost unchanged for two hundred years’. In fact, the farms incessantly changed hands, rents rose, arrears were no longer allowed, half the population left Orkney between 1861 and 1901 and a third left the three islands in the Muirs’ group during the thirty years which surrounded Edwin’s childhood. Small farms were amalgamated, the families ...”

“... happened in Europe, where modern humans replaced the indigenous Neanderthals. Stringer’s star rose dramatically when new dating techniques showed that caves on Mount Carmel in Israel were occupied by modern humans almost 100,000 years ago, before the Neanderthals. Indeed, Neanderthals and moderns seem to have occupied the same caves but at different ...”

“... added to it, to blend the scribbling madman with the rutting faun and the soaring spectre of the rose. So far as we know there were no films made of Nijinsky dancing, and we have to rely on descriptions, posed photographs, some snapshots, drawings and sketches, and the legend. But the legend itself, now that Romola and the others with the living memory are ...”

“... on good clarets and burgundies, not as some regrettable side-effect of the Free Trade treaty with France, but in a roaring populist style which anticipates his emergence as ‘the People’s William’: Now, I make an appeal to the friends of the poor man. There is a time which comes to all of us – the time, I mean, of sickness – when wine becomes a ...”