“... the gruesome possibility that the work won’t make it out alive. An aphorism on boredom might hope to escape the slow, dumb mumbling of its subject. But to carry off an entire volume devoted to a condition about as definite as a mud puddle in a flood – this feat requires extraordinary qualities, such as have preserved from fractious tears countless ...”

“... was impressive, especially in the case of the ‘Dream Team’ of Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey and Steven Holl. On the other hand, to be in the running one had to be a designated über-architect, presumably with the technical expertise required of grands projets: stock in the Dream Team, Lord Foster and the Skidmore Owings & Merrill group ...”

“... won’t know what it’s all about’ – produced more meaning than it ever intended, or could hope to contain. The plot at its simplest: Sergeant Raymond Shaw (played by Harvey) is a Korean War veteran, winner of a Medal of Honor, who, along with his soldiers, is brainwashed by a Communist cabal into becoming the perfect assassin (‘without those ...”

“... says of his brother Mycroft, but he could just as well be talking of himself. The reader can’t hope to match his deductions, only marvel at the performance. The era of cold Victorian logic was succeeded by the golden age of the 1920s and 1930s, with its cleverly arranged clues and psycho-social unravelling. In 1928 S.S. Van Dine, the creator of Philo ...”

“... have free men, equal in rights.’ In a letter to a friend, the stonemason and ‘worker-poet’ Charles Poncy, she described her feelings: ‘I spent nights without sleeping, days without sitting down. You are crazy, you are drunk, you are happy to fall asleep in the mire and to wake up in heaven … The Republic has been won. It is assured.’ But the ...”

“... ambassador, is to be believed, in the autumn of 1533 he twice went so far as to urge the Emperor Charles V to act against Henry, though whether he was calling for an armed invasion or just a trade embargo is not clear. But he never made a firm public statement against the break with Rome. He did not speak out, so far as we know, in early 1532, when royal ...”

“... Tikigaq’s intense approving awareness of itself. Lowenstein arrived in Tikigaq (a.k.a. Point Hope) in the Seventies. Though intrusion from the West came later to the settlement than to almost any other point along the circumpolar band of Inuit cultures, collapse was assured from the 1850s when American ships began to work the lucrative waters of the ...”

“... honesty with which he recounts his experiences that he is able to admit as much. In Borderlines Charles Nicholl heads east. In his previous travel book, The Fruit Palace, he explored the ruthless cocaine underworld of Colombia: this time he is hoping to find the sources of spiritual rather than narcotic bliss by enrolling in a Buddhist forest temple in ...”

“... water-proof: so I have to walk about in it, having nothing else.’ Then, on 27 November 1912, to Charles Gifford: ‘You will be grieved and shocked to hear Emma died this morning shortly after nine o’clock.’ There follow, besides the usual replies to condolences, a glimpse or two of the squalor of domestic unhappiness: ‘I am getting through E.’s ...”

“... annoyed with us, or worried in any way … it is very kind of you to ask us to luncheon … I do hope your cough is better.’ To her husband she wrote: ‘Keep calm and don’t be bullied.’ In an age and a class where letter-writing was obligatory she was a versatile and ingenious correspondent, learning to put a dab of jam on the most bread and butter ...”

“... permitted dope He medicines the sickness of our age; Offers the ugly, glamour; the hopeless, hope. Compare these pieces to Larkin’s advertising poems, such as ‘Sunny Prestatyn’ or ‘Send No Money’; or ‘Essential Beauty’, with its ambivalent response to the vast billboards that ‘Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise/Of ...”

“... who called her “a piquant mixture between a milkmaid and a lady” – to the elegant Sir Charles Bunbury, formerly the husband of the Lady Sarah Lennox with whom George III had been so much in love before duty forced him to marry his German queen.’ There’s also a Victorianism of outlook, in assertions such as one to the effect that Mrs ...”

“... is a chronological table to assist their memories. Speaking of Joan’s strange encounter with Charles VII at Chinon, where today the docile tourist follows his guide from mouldering tower to tower, she finds an ‘irrational element’ in history which ‘will always defy analysis’, an idea that would have been worth saying more about. Miss Warner is ...”

“... Altogether, the first third of this book does not make cheerful reading. Only after Beatrice met Charles Booth, who was already engaged on his epoch-making survey of Life and Labour in London, did things begin to look up. Both Charles and his wife Mary became firm friends with this beautiful and intellectually precocious ...”

“... and time-servers. Hawke offered a new dawn to Labor voters, and seemed to offer a gleam of hope even in company boardrooms, who thought that at least he might be able to keep the more rumbustious unions in check, and soothe a troubled country. And indeed Hawke’s election automatically healed one festering wound. It has long been one of the puzzles of ...”