“... in an incongruous inner ring of like-minded persons, including Tolkien, a Catholic convert, and Charles Williams, a Cockney original with a decidedly creepy inner life, and an extraordinary talent for updating the mystico-religious poetic attitudes of the Fin-de-Siècle. Thus was born the Inklings, an unexclusive but very characteristic group of like-minded ...”

“... even his eternal power and Godhead.’ In Faraday’s Bible, also prominently on display, the same passage is marked. The message is even spelled out for the inattentive: Faraday belonged to a small Christian sect, the Sandemanians, and ‘believed firmly that in studying science he was investigating the laws written into the Universe by God.’ This is not ...”

“... certainly do. The essays edited by Egger (not all of which are as execrably written as that passage) and Serial Killers, the energetic but infuriatingly sloppy book by a psychologist called Joel Norris, could hardly be more alarming about the extent of the phenomenon. Norris cites an unspecified report from the FBI to the effect that, in ...”

“... relationship to consciousness. Here, to give an example of hardcore Hofstadterismus, is a telling passage buried for the assiduous or serendipitous reader to spot in the bibliography: Gebstedter, Egbert B. Thetamagical Memas: Seeking the Whence of Letter and Spirit. Perth: Acidic Books, 1985. A curious pot-pourri, bloated and muddled – yet remarkably ...”

“... Consider the wartime movie, Pimpernel Smith, in which the stupid and wicked German reads out a passage of Wodehouse, alleging that it is unfunny: ‘so how can ve onderstand zis nation of madmen?’ British audiences laughed smugly. The hero of that movie was a sleepy, gentlemanly don who suddenly turned up trumps in the anti-Nazi struggle, like a Percy ...”

“... garments’ – she has been raped by this time anyway. But she is being posed by Richardson in a passage like the following, and someone’s fantasies are being indulged. The marquis is not far away.    Her dress was white lustring, exceeding neat; but her stays seemed not tight-laced. I was told afterwards, that her laces had been cut, when she fainted ...”

“... They are not referred to again, but they have their place, like the towns and caves in A Passage to India, to remind us that separations are of the order of existence. Like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, ‘The Secret Sharer’ is one of the classic texts about duality and doubles. But as Miller’s book shows, the theme is often the more revealing the more ...”

“... Arabs verging on the sacrosanct, and in Arabia one of the most important rights is the right of passage. The Islamic era begins with a journey – that of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to al-Madinah; pilgrimage is one of the Pillars of Islam; sabil Allah, the Road of God, is shorthand for all the exertions expected of a good Muslim. At first glance, this ...”

“... attempt to consider all her work, he was publicly rebuked for it by Landfall’s former editor, Charles Brasch, who declared Ashton-Warner unworthy of such attention. That is not the end of the story, however. More books have followed including a novel set in London, Three, which is as economical as Incense to Idols is copious, and which is ...”

“... was, which was why Taylor and Hessey, the young firm which took over Keats’s Poems of 1817 from Charles Ollier, were prepared to treat him so generously. They did the same for Clare. In the event, neither poet made it commercially: in Keats’s case, because success had to be on his own terms, and these went against the grain of his natural genius. He did ...”

“... world was proposed at St Andrews in 1720, its odd title hinting at French roots, and the career of Charles Rollin, Professeur d’Eloquence au Collège Roial et associé à L’Académie Roiale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, encouraging Crawford to conclude that, together with the phrase ‘Belles Lettres’, ‘Eloquence’ begins effectively to map out ...”

“... definitive in its field, handsomely produced, and has the virtue of introducing the Provençal Charles Mauron – who possessed one of the most incisive intellects associated with the group – to a hitherto unacquainted anglo-phone readership. Blythe’s story starts in 1912, when the Nashes and Carrington emerge from the Slade School, and trails past the ...”

“... cast of characters. For most of the previous century, serial writers had co-ordinated the passage of time within their novels to the succession of weekly or monthly issues in which installments appeared: the Pickwick Papers scheduled a love plot to coincide with Valentine’s Day, as soap operas do now. The Holmes stones reject this strategy. Although ...”

“... park – unprecedented behaviour for the ground-loving norvegicus. My first thought on reading the passage was: pity the squirrels. As for the head exterminator, he got on a walkie-talkie and shouted: ‘Hey, Rick! There’s rats in the goddam trees!’ Rats – fast, tireless runners – will also make use of public transport. Subway workers have reported ...”

“... characters – Aaron Burr and the Emperor Julian – as well as in his satires. In Burr, Charles Schuyler, a character invented by Vidal to be this vice president’s biographer, says his subject is ‘a man of perfect charm and fascination. A monster, in short.’ Not unlike the novel’s author. ‘I suspect Cromwell was right,’ Vice President ...”