“... a year. He had resigned the Chancellorship immediately after the Submission of the Clergy on 15 May 1532. At the beginning of 1533, he was obliged to defend his Church from another assault, constitutional this time, but again anonymous, sponsored by Thomas Cromwell. The antagonist was an eminent and now elderly lawyer, one Christopher St German, and he was ...”

“... what used to be called a gentleman, though as his father had been in trade (bacon), his standing may have been precarious. But he was educated. Oh dear, yes, he was educated. He says himself that when living as a fisherman he simply dropped his accomplishments, yet when he is writing – and not about literary matters but about fishing – he cannot keep ...”

“... was intentionally such that very few records of essential decisions were kept; David Irving may even be formally right in his assertion that there is no written document to link Hitler himself with the Final Solution until October 1943; and the same absence or confusion in the written record has even been taken as evidence that the whole thing did not ...”

“... sexual gratification than he used to. This is a seasonally intended book and Crisp’s memoirs may well be sequelised from now to Xmas 2000. An ingenuous youth – Bert – is also the hero of Nicholas Mosely’s Imago Bird. Mosley also employs the monologue-journal form of narration and this work is a sequel. Hereafter, all resemblance ceases. Imago Bird ...”

“... we shall soon see them in one great permanent collection here? Yes. But the watercolours alone may make one forever dissatisfied with the delicate milk-and-water primness of the English mainstream. In the last rooms, with the late oils, the walls fall open into pale golden explosions. How did that fuss ever arise about Whistler throwing a pot of paint in ...”

“... concepts from sociology, not so much to diagnose its causation as to set out the pressures which may have played a part. Witchcraft is important because its existence was a major part of religious belief. It was also significant as an unusual sector of criminal law, for in Scotland as in continental Europe the crime of the witch lay not in any particular act ...”

“... by many of his arguments. He is discussing the status of a moral feeling which a person may find that he has, perhaps a form of squeamishness, when on reflection he cannot reasonably endorse the feeling, which is recognised to be in conflict with his more considered opinions and with his general principles. Then he ...”

“... used to despise evaluative criticism but Professor Brooke-Rose does not hesitate to judge. This may look like rebellion but the values she assumes were always, one suspects, latent in structuralism. Thus Tolkien fails by the canons of tidiness, functionality, consistency, coherence. As Voltaire was shocked by Shakespeare’s mingling of tragedy and ...”

“... provides arrows pointing into pans apparently to show the way in. However, it is an art-form which may well delight all those emancipated readers who save their nail clippings to put on the compost heap. ‘Food from the hedgerows seems a pretty Arcadian idea,’ says Jane Grigson in her Vegetable Book. ‘It has even supported a best-seller or two.’ Though ...”

“... ingenious compromises, and indeed a challenge like this, amounting in effect to the pang of guilt, may sometimes be useful to a creative artist. How many composers have been teased into action by the desire to assimilate, to allay the taunting demon of, John Cage? Cage has been catalysing like mad for over thirty years, but his unusual career, from enfant to ...”

“... I went to live in America. He was 76; I was 23. I was unmarried; he had just married again. This may be significant. I said goodbye, and he enclosed my forearm with a huge hand of undiminished grip. Without looking at me, he said: ‘Wenn der Putz steht, liegt der Seichel indrehd!’ In other words, which you may possibly ...”

“... of the workforce. ‘Heads of households’ formerly employed in the asset-stripped factories may be on the dole while their wives may be the only people in the family with a job – they are now the bread-winners. Nearly a million jobs may yet disappear by the turn of the ...”

“... In her iconographic poem ‘Bleeding’ (1970), the American poet May Swenson presents a dialogue between a knife and a cut: Stop bleeding said the knife. I would if I could said the cut. Slop bleeding you make me messy with this blood. I’m sorry said the cut. Stop or I will sink in further said the knife. Don’t said the cut ...”

“... The excess (if that’s how it strikes you) of nautical detail is certainly deliberate, and may even be a sly put-down for readers who don’t expect a Kiplingesque infatuation with technical know-how in novels by women. It is clear from his optimistic view of thermodynamics that Morgan is no believer in chaos theory, and of course the career of the ...”

“... and live happily ever after. The bad end badly, and the virgin end virgin (except that gentlemen may lapse occasionally, for experience or from a willingness to oblige). Pirates and brigands, shipwreck and human sacrifice cannot derail the classical vocabulary and the mellifluous style; true love and Hellenic heroism ignore economics (no bourgeois vulgarity ...”