“... government minister,’ Brown wrote of his subject, ‘and his failure to achieve any high office may have been the result of a proper disinclination on the part of a man who knew that his talents were inappropriate. He was accused by some of laziness.’ One conclusion of Brown’s biography, which was based on his Edinburgh PhD, was that the charge of ...”

“... the disaster, what the people want to hear coincides with what the military want to show, so it may not, after all, be a simple matter of the people’s view prevailing. Paranoia, incidentally, afflicts a large part of the Russian press, even under normal circumstances. In the tabloids this provides entertainment: one widely available paper, Sovershenno ...”

“... and royal warrants want up to date selling spaces. Bootmakers and wine merchants in St James’s may play up antiquity and preserve battered shutters and ripe mahogany but they are the exception. The timeframe of architecture is longer than that of retailing, and conflicts arise. Planners and landlords may discipline ...”

“... made against the government by Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme at 6.07 a.m. on 29 May 2003. (Lloyd refers to Gilligan’s story as the ‘original’ report, as if what went before – you know, the invasion of Iraq, the intelligence dossier justifying the invasion etc – weren’t relevant.) Gilligan’s report was bad journalism, and was ...”

“... assumption that adaptation is an ongoing success story. Human beings, it seems, are all right. We may shoot ourselves in the foot, other people in the head, crash cars and planes, ruin the environment and have a bad habit of turning conflicts of interest into vast cash bonuses, but natural selection works, or at least works better than reason and technology ...”

“... moments. But it isn’t bound to get lost in them, as in a series of whirlpools. Consider what may be going on when Deneuve’s character, Fabienne (Fabienne being Deneuve’s middle name), tells Binoche’s character, Lumir, that she couldn’t possibly understand how it feels to be an actress, and when, in an interview, she reflects on her successors in ...”

“... who is not Isla. Matured perhaps by his mainland adventure, Spike thinks his mother’s illness may be related to his father’s failure to care for her, and plans another journey to the mainland, this time with Isla, in search of the doctor his father will not consult. When we see that Jamie associates the doctor, Kelson (played by Ralph Fiennes), with a ...”

“... In large parts of the South blacks were kept from voting by intimidation and trick and murder. It may indicate the atmosphere if I tell you that the New York Times had great difficulty finding a lawyer in Alabama who would represent the paper in the Sullivan case. When one did agree to take the case, and he invited the Times’s New York lawyer down to ...”

“... defeat – the vengeful fury unleashed by the Czechs on the Sudeten German population after May 1945 as the Benes Government looked the other way. And they also explain the lack of any effective democratic resistance to the Communist putsch of 1948, and the failure of the Prague Spring of 1968. Jaroslav Hasek’s Good Soldier Svejk has often been ...”

“... For Idle hands to do. In Books, or Work, or healthful Play, Let my first Years be past, That I may give for every Day Some good Account at last. Benjamin Franklin was soon working up his secularised version of the Puritan ethos. In Poor Richard’s Almanac (1758) he assured his readers that ‘sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens ...”

“... flat as possible. American higher education allows much freedom of choice, and English students may practically major in Ulysses, but Teacher has the duty of keeping it from doing them harm. No weaker hypothesis, I submit, can explain the glee with which Kenner reports a total agreement of modern experts that Molly has been pure during the ten years without ...”

“... a bunch of overgrown kids playing at dressing up – which was, in its way, even more alluring. We may be different, they seemed to be saying, but we’re also just like you. As well as the familiar ambiguities of gender and sexuality, in the best of the Ziggy songs Bowie channels both the extraterrestrial superstar and the crooked-toothed boy from Bromley: he ...”

“... many visits . . . have I found anyone about.’ The fact is, in Sebald nobody is ever about. This may be poetic but it seems to me a short cut to significance. 6 April, Yorkshire. The new organic shop in the village continues to do well, the walk down the lane to the Nissen hut always a pleasure even in the bitterest weather. There are sheep in the adjoining ...”

“... what you are interested in writing and to succeed in getting editors to pay for it, is a feat that may require pretty close calculation and a good deal of ingenuity. You have to learn to load solid matter into notices of ephemeral happenings, you have to develop a resourcefulness at pursuing a line of thought through pieces on miscellaneous and more or less ...”

“... early in 1984. Assad lived just long enough to witness the total Israeli retreat from Lebanon in May 2000. He was probably the only Arab leader to earn America and Israel’s respect, having inflicted defeats on both. And he left a son to prolong his legacy. For the men who came to rule the United States with the inauguration of George W. Bush, the Syrian ...”