“... 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 ...”

“... twice offered him the throne? After finishing Margaret FitzHerbert’s excellent book the reader may be in two minds; at least King Aubrey would have wielded the sceptre with more panache than Lord Rothermere on the throne of Hungary. Herbert was the son of the fourth Earl of Carnarvon. His half-brother, the fifth Earl, was the co-finder of Tutankhamen’s ...”

“... scene in the middle distance, the way it is ploughed in. This was a surprising wedding present, we may suppose, to paint for the daughter of a local squire, but Rosenthal reminds us that the most routine agricultural processes were felt to be poetic, and he quotes some passages from Constable’s beloved Bloomfield on the ‘fat’ning treasure from the ...”

“... to deal with. And why was Gone with the Wind such a huge success? Miss Edwards suggests that there may be an analogy, in these Depression years, with the hysterical response to Lindbergh. Or has it to do with bringing together a very recently split continent through the sort of romantic saga that is always called feminine, though men readers and critics much ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... to make sure nothing so shocking as an empty seat should ever appear on the television screen. 6 May, London. A second session doing a voice-over for a commercial for Quartz washing-machines. I spend half an hour trying to invest the words ‘This frog’ with some singularity of tone that will distinguish this particular frog from the previous frog, with ...”

“... the husband who will inevitably succeed him, and so to live the rest of her life in happiness. He may not be as conscious as the author of Jehan de Saintré that the shortest way to a lover’s heart is through the gullet – he believes that feminine modesty and obedience will do much of the job – but the cookery section of his treatise probably did more ...”

“... as unchanging as James hoped Venice would be. The Naples of Così Fan Tutti, Dibdin’s best book, may have been scrubbed up for the G7 conference and made safe again for tourism. Yet cleaning the streets can be a way of doing business as usual. Nothing basic has changed and nobody – the police, the criminals, the prostitutes – is exactly what he ...”

“... to die young, preferably of consumption. Their women, if their tastes lie in this direction, may be called to matrimony and motherhood: but they are seldom given to authorship, and they are not encouraged to own independent musical personalities. These preconditions leave a clear field for the imagination of Hollywood scriptwriters or the industry of ...”

“... trouble with The Silent Angel. Böll revised the novel twice, but Mittelhauve still hung back. It may have been that he did not believe his readers were quite ready to look at what Böll called ‘the generation which has “come home”, a generation which knows that there is no home for them on this earth’. Just possibly he thought the novel, moving ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... becoming politicised. Of the five thousand clubbers who go through these doors in a weekend, many may dimly remember that it was the owner of this club, James Palumbo, who gave a car, a Rover, to Peter Mandelson MP, to help the cause. It is here, at the suitably messianic Ministry of Sound, that the Use Your Vote campaign is organised. Much of the music ...”

“... 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 ...”