“... and never wanted to see another book after that.’ All I can say is, he deserved his black and white tiles. He has both autonomy and tact. His translation is full of character, marvellously pointed but in touch with timelessness, relished but without striving for effect. We are in the world of Briggflatts, of Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘The Great ...”

“... as this must increasingly be supplied by technology. The ‘bog, clay and rubble, and the stark black dearth’ that Mr Laurence has had to tread is not beneficial for human nature, and leads to ‘penury, inertness and grimace’. So far as is humanly possible, these volumes are free from errors and omissions, though Mr Laurence invites readers to sent ...”

“... were emerging. The heroic image of the Third World was being exchanged for that of the starving black baby in charity advertisements. The Left was in crisis. And there was Islam. The overthrow of the Shah of Iran and all that he had represented in Cold War politics, and the rise of the Khomeinist state, were seen by many as the re-emergence of the ...”

“... most eccentric of slices to extract from all that life – a freak blond hair plucked from a jet-black (and horribly unravelling) plait?’ He knows we know the answer. These characters and stories are not less Indian than for whom the claim is made. And the same goes for the stories. The supposed centre that makes them seem marginal, or (later) seeks to ...”

“... about the necessity of class war. The reader is left pondering this resurgence and the strange, black, ugly things that are to ...”

“... the first anniversary, he began to wonder, to his horror, about her eyes: Were they brown or black, or grey? Green? Christ, I can’t say ... One spring morning, something gave in him; shouldering his twin grief like a cross, he shut the front door, turned into the street and had walked just ten yards, when, from a dark close, he caught a flash of ...”

“... handful of other writers who, I feel, might have given us something like Gayev’s ‘I pot the black’ in The Cherry Orchard. (Apparently, Swedish critics found fault with Söderberg for his ‘digressions’ and ‘collages’, and he remained un-understood for some considerable time.) The consultation includes a bizarrely wonderful – and again ...”

“... most of which were ruled by the British or the French. In Liberia the incomers were almost all black and the oligarchy they set up continued to rule the country until two decades after much of the rest of Africa had won its independence. The violent overthrow of the old political order – in 1980 – occurred in the lifetime of many young adults; in ...”

“... We can dress as showily as birds (including crows – 70 to 90 per cent of clothes are dyed black) because we have found ways to stain pale yarns in strong colours. During the last 150 years the whole spectrum has come to be cheaply available, as it has become possible to synthesise dyes which previously had to be extracted from plants and animals. Dyes ...”

“... when he says, in his closing sentences, that we ‘can’t say what it’s like to actually be a black-tailed rattlesnake, much less a little ridgenose’ (why that ‘much less’? How can he tell?) But, the personalities of different species – another remarkable feature of their diversity – are nicely displayed. When he describes coral snakes as ...”

“... in this, and indeed any biography – its author. As Gordon Craig transformed theatre design, so Michael Holroyd in 1967 revolutionised the writing of biography with Lytton Strachey, which extended the biographer’s reach from the public to the private, from the work to the man, from the study to the bedroom. In doing so, he breached the border between the ...”

“... the baker’s wife, Rosina Zoft, allows Katharina to use her bread oven from time to time; Michael Stahl, who owns a shed, lets her store her grain there; when she needs fresh milk, neighbours supply it. She, in turn, dispenses homemade herbal remedies, lends money and makes gifts of food and wine. Resentments arise when too little or too much is ...”

“... There is also one Michael Agnolo from Caravaggio who is doing marvellous things in Rome ... He thinks little of the works of other masters ... All works of art he believes to be ‘Bagatelli’, child’s play, whoever by, and whatever of, unless they are made from life, and that there is no better course than to follow Nature ...”

“... athletic shoe industry, and the fashion industry as a whole, traffics in images. A Nike as depicts Michael Jordan as a corporate CEO who takes time in between games to inspect the shoes bearing his name. The figures of athletes and supermodels flash everywhere. ‘Because beauty has something to say,’ is how Esquire announced its Christy Turlington cover, as ...”

“... The aim of SOE was to organise sabotage and revolt in occupied Europe, with the help of ‘black’ propaganda. Momentarily, perhaps, Dalton saw himself as another Lenin, lighting the touchpaper of an international socialist revolution. But again the results were disappointing. Instead of setting Europe ablaze, Dalton ended up fighting an epic ...”