“... dead lie round’, surely he is suggesting that the wisdom here isn’t just a worldly wisdom, but may contain something more. What is the difference, then, between this ‘someone’ of Larkin’s with ‘a hunger in himself to be more serious’ and the voice at the end of ‘Little Gidding’ who states: ‘We shall not cease from exploration’? Poets have ...”

“... the middle two-thirds of the 20th century and a second rise over the past generation. The story may be most surprising to economists. Piketty tells it explicitly to correct the optimistic theory Simon Kuznets proposed in 1955, which was widely accepted in the profession, that inequality lessens as economies mature. If Piketty is correct, the extremes of ...”

“... writes white: ‘After which Bob and I      .’ The type for these provoking blanks may be a boyhood diary he recalled keeping; a strange incident had occurred when he was sent for a walk on the Downs near Eastbourne by his prep-school headmaster, and had been induced to masturbate a middle-aged man behind some gorse bushes (‘Dear little ...”

“... there are between 12,000 and 15,000 letters by James in existence and suggested that many more may still be in private hands (he calculated that James may have written as many as 40,000 letters in his lifetime, many of them now lost). Some further unpublished letters had by then appeared in other editions, notably a ...”

“... are interpreted as proof, and Covid becomes the string on which any and all conspiracy theories may be threaded. Seen through the conspiracist filter, by forcing us to wear masks, by closing bars and isolating the frail elderly, by trying to terrify us over, as they see it, a dose of flu, or by microwaving us with 5G, the secret elite has shown its hand.Now ...”

“... he found some wispy ‘not very reliable’ references suggesting that a dealer called Tawadros may have existed, and that he may have had a shop near Shepheard’s Hotel – previously the Hotel des Anglais, where spies and German generals used to gather. But there were no photographs or any other evidence of Tawadros ...”

“... Andy Seaman​ felt out of place when, on 26 May 2022, he walked into the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith. Andy has little connection to Ireland; he’s from East London and his family’s roots are in Dominica. But earlier that day he had heard on the radio that the centre was hosting an event run by the organisation Troubles, Tragedy and Trauma ...”

“... their infant eyelids and steeped their infant souls in blessed forgetfulness.’ The sympathy may be accepted, but in no way can the words be taken as a ‘voice’ from the past, for they can never have been spoken. Liz Lochhead on lodging with relatives has the rhythms of spoken speech. It is not the village Hampdens of Scottish life that we need from ...”

“... on experience – which ultimately amounts to a bias in favour of life. The order of physics may be value-neutral: bio-medicine cannot be. We must, of course, strive to achieve stricter criteria for defining the sound and the pathological, but this has to do, not with fact-gathering and experimentation, but with conceptual clarification. This is not to ...”

“... to describe thickly – an expression he uses elsewhere – the Balinese theatre state. While some may object to his occasional rhetorical overkill or methodological vagueness, most would, I think, agree that this work is a masterpiece of a kind. Geertz succeeds perhaps better than anyone else could in achieving the ends he seeks: dissecting and depicting Bali ...”

“... is rude to no one whom he is likely to meet again. Students inexpert in reading between the lines may be tempted toward some dull books. Still, Morrill combines, as few scholars of his energy can, a firm independence of judgment with a reluctance to create an orthodoxy or an empire. The book is hearteningly latitudinarian. Even so, its perspective could ...”

“... pronouncements – the Judge tells her that the marriage is at an end. As compensation, Manka may take from the house whatever she likes best. Manka likes the Judge best: she drugs and transports him to her father’s house. In the face of this about-turn, so to speak, the Judge has finally to admit her as a legal partner in both senses of the term. A ...”

“... returned to the country. Paul still talks regularly to Norman’s ghost, and has fits of rage that may or may not have originated in his wartime service. He patches up his lifelong quarrel with David, and then compulsively quarrels with him again. He would rather be his boss than his dad. And of course there are several ...”

“... rather too bluntly – Villeneuve is stately where Lynch is awkward. In his defence, Lynch may have been trying to prove to Hollywood that he could be as crude as it needed him to be. After all, he had turned down a chance to direct the third Star Wars movie in order to have his own opportunity in space. We should also perhaps make an allowance for the ...”

“... Nelson has hung a number of large dusty plaques bearing Commonwealth flags and the legend ‘Long May They Reign’. At their centre, instead of the regal ‘GR’, is the cursive ‘GE’ of General Electric. The galleries were paid for by Lord Duveen of Millbank, energetic and ingenious purveyor of Old Masters to the grandest industrialists and financiers ...”