“... and Vivaldi’s concertos, Scarlatti composed the same piece six hundred times. The pattern may be similar, the bipartite structure with its double bars and repeat marks may be the same. The content is never the same and rarely even similar. Handel is, of course, better-known than this. Or is he? The Water Music and ...”

“... Afterwards it’s either a cheery wave and back to the motor or a small gin and tonic if I think I may have been recognised. Whatever else I do in the morning I must inspect the Burrell Collection. Brand-new and some miles away in a park. ‘Get as near as possible,’ I told the taxi driver: ‘I always fall down in snow.’ We parked on concrete and ...”

“... of the widely-publicised troubles at the International PEN Congress held this January in New York may ironically have been the new timeliness which Norman Mailer’s outbursts bestowed on feminist consideration of masculinity, misogyny and writing. Mailer, president of PEN and chief organiser and fundraiser for the huge writers’ conference, shed his new ...”

“... and Australian citizens were unknowingly put at risk. A number of people, mainly Aborigines, may have died as a direct result of the fall-out from the blasts. Margaret Thatcher has insisted that no one was used as a guinea pig by the Ministry of Defence: the evidence that she is not telling the truth is overwhelming. Two books, probably the first of a ...”

“... the rules for writing down the correct equations, and if he (or his computer) works every hard, he may find the solution in the form of numbers to be checked against the experimenter’s – the wavelengths of spectral lines, for example. Bohr’s earlier quantum theory had not done this very well, but the new quantum mechanics succeeded brilliantly. From now ...”

“... to some five hundred pages that I have often consulted, never without profit.’ His tongue may be edging towards his cheek, for his own achievement in creating from the archives a being convincingly of his period, and consistent with the accounts of his friends and enemies, has been largely achieved by removing the apparatus which might muffle the ...”

“... assured cry: ‘Me! Joe! Me!’ However, there is more to it than that. Bertolucci himself may well regard this absence of a sense of self in the character of Caterina as part of the existential characterisation of the New Dramaturgy, of which he claims La Luna to be an example. But surely this absence of gravity, in the sense of weight, this depthless ...”

“... celebrity within it, was intellectually contemptuous of Catholicism. The key to his attitude may be, as Dunne suggests, that as a ‘colonial outsider’ he retained the colon stereotype of the native Irish. Certainly such attitudes were reinforced, rather incongruously, by enlightened secularism when Tone achieved a second identity as a soldier of the ...”

“... state of mind as he struggled to keep the show on the road. The British public in 1940 may have supposed that inbred superiority of national character would lead to victory in the end, as in the past. But Churchill was in possession of the most secret military information, including a buff-coloured box containing the Enigma decrypts, decyphered at ...”

“... holiness of motherhood and its infinite superiority over any other occupation that a woman may take to’. As she was 34 years old at the date of their marriage, she and Sidney had agreed that parenthood was not for them, though the editors of this book mention, without disclosing their source, that the couple ‘apparently enjoyed a limited physical ...”

“... the fear that the country is winding down and losing its competitive vigour, and the fear that it may fall apart. This tension has, if anything, become more acute. In the Democratic Party contest between Hart and Mondale we saw a growing concern among party supporters that the two candidates’ attacks on each other were ‘tearing apart the party’. Yet, as ...”

“... the binding, the presence of the original wrappers, the count of plates, and any notes that may have been inserted by former owners or curators. Legman’s 50-page introduction is quirky, reminiscent, indignant, gossipy, truculent and informative, in approximately equal quantities. It is devoted wholly to erotica as articles bought, sold and ...”

“... unmentionable fact.’ She discusses prostitution and free unions. But what the portrait of Rhoda may lack in subtlety it makes up for in ambivalence, which after all produces a similar effect. Gissing’s admiration appears to break down at several important points in the plot. He makes her show none of the female solidarity which should have animated a New ...”

“... you must also, of course, find (or construct for yourself) appropriate packs of cards. And this may prove quite a problem. The 12 games described require packs of various sizes: 78 cards, 62 cards, 63 cards, 54 cards, 42 cards, 36 cards. But that is only the beginning. Here, in summary, is a description of the Tarot pack known as Tarocco Bolognese, which ...”

“... insists that not all scientific metaphors are to be counted as themata, however much insight they may convey. Where and how does he draw the line? It isn’t frivolous to point out that modern physics is using anthropomorphic metaphors, such as the ‘birth’ of a ‘strange’ particle, just at a time when psychology is studiously representing its findings ...”