“... and do we tire of it sooner, once we are accustomed to it and it begins relentlessly to accumulate?John Updike wrote of Joyce Carol Oates that ‘after the first wave of stories and novels … crashed in and swept away a debris of praise and prizes, protective seawalls were built, and a sullen tide set in.’ New standards are applied. Resistance builds ...”

“... of ‘God Save the Queen’ on the Thames, a rebellious parody of the Royal River Pageant. John Lydon won himself a place in British folklore. But for all the mock outrage over the Pistols’ anarchic antics and seditious lyrics, none of those involved – among them Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood – faced criminal charges. The performance was ...”

“... of the Democratic Unionist Party said he expected to find holes in the noses of Garret Fitzgerald, John Hume and Dick Spring – evidence of Haughey’s rope. The three men walked right into that easy quip. So, this is what we’re all reduced to in the eyes of Northern Unionists – papal bulls. This is the old game of Irish national politics. You reduce ...”

“... There’s been no serious suggestion of a boycott by players or fans. Despite the presence of John Terry and a Russian oligarch, the person who really spoiled the pictures of Chelsea celebrating their recent European Cup win was George Osborne, standing grinning among the officials. Ukraine’s Polish co-hosts are telling the Germans not to snub Euro ...”

“... such as David Smith and Anthony Caro, rendered industrial production aesthetic, while others like John Chamberlain and Arman artified its debris: some of the trashed cars and smashed commodities at Hangar 17 recall the work of the latter pair. There is a further ambiguity of display: the photographs reveal an arrangement of things that is no longer forensic ...”

“... had any significance, he said the inhabitants of a Catholic country – as I write the remains of John Paul II are doing the local rounds, Pátzcuaro this afternoon, Morelia this evening – should know the answer to the question, and then added a gloss to the effect that God took six days to make the mess we live in, and then had the gall to give himself a ...”

“... writes, ‘dances like Salomé’ between Picasso and Rousseau, with Picasso as art’s ‘new John the Baptist’ and Rousseau a ‘sentimental Herod’.The Barnes show attempts to free Laurencin from such patronising comparisons. It is the fourth in the foundation’s series of exhibitions on female French modernists, which began with Berthe Morisot in ...”

“... who knocked me flat before I could think, before I knew a thing, leaving me no way back, and took John Keats in a room by the Spanish Steps, stanza della morte, where I caught one glimpse of the flowered beams and fainted fast, and took Pierre Bonnard who delved with me deep in the mysteries of domesticity, year in, year out, leaving me no way back, and took ...”

“... This ought to be a good novel, for it is by a good writer and deals intelligently with a bit of British history that continues to interest us. And it certainly gives pleasure; so it seems a shade ungrateful to be asking what’s wrong with it. Is this all? Is this the best a lively imagination can make of the plight of the virtuous spy, whether wild or sober, dedicated or not, Blunt or Burgess? There is nothing much here to conflict with the stereotypical idea of the Thirties, the afternoon men in their Soho clubs and hideouts, their lust for working-class boys, their not wonderfully well-informed Marxism, and their easy way of arranging matters to suit themselves, whether in the choice of wartime careers, say at Bletchley, or perhaps in some other establishment where scraps of secret could be salvaged to keep their Russian contacts happy ...”

“... say about most of the Tories, too, notably the nauseating and utterly uncompromising reactionary John Croker, for whom the rotten boroughs were the essence of freedom and prosperity; Sir Robert Inglis, who proclaimed that ‘this House would not be bound by the cries of a majority of the people’, and Lord Lyndhurst, who is described by Pearce as a ...”

“... something stranger and more disturbing than anything painters commonly manage comes through. Sir John Herschel’s stubbly chin and wild white hair as they emerge from draped velvet in Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph do not conform to the painterly canon of images of great men. But many early art photographs do recall paintings. Country people in Peter ...”

“... Israel’s activities in Gaza and Lebanon are referred to as the ‘Israeli-American’ war. John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, has refused to sanction a diplomatic end to the current conflict because ‘I’d like to know when there’s been an effective ceasefire between a terrorist organisation and a state in the past.’ Such sentiments ...”

“... phrase in Rimbaud, the last line of a prose poem called ‘Parade’, ingeniously translated by John Ashbery as ‘Sideshow’. The poem describes a set of frightening ‘robust rascals’, young and old, who appear to be street performers.They act out ballads, tragedies of thieves and demi-gods … and resort to magnetic comedy. Their eyes flame, the blood ...”

“... possession of a sailing boat built for him at Genoa. ‘It cost me 80l.,’ he wrote to his friend John Gisborne in June, ‘and reduced me to some difficulty in point of money. However, it is swift and beautiful, and appears quite a vessel. Williams is captain, and we drive along in this delightful bay in the evening wind … until earth appears another ...”