“... from an unpublished journal by Robert Pinget, one of the few Beckett disciples to whom she took a liking. On 6 August 1960, he pays a visit to hand back to Sam the ms. [of Comment c’est] he’d given me three days before to read. I was dreading having to give my opinion. The text is so difficult that it requires several rereadings. I had no right to ...”

“... The idea that Smith didn’t develop is a dull one regardless of whether it’s true or false (as John Bayley pointed out: ‘She never needed to do anything so banal as to “develop”, for the spectrum of tone continuously present is amazingly wide’). Despite his earlier criticism of her interest in cats Larkin’s later review singled out ‘The Singing ...”

“... view. And yet, for the next fifty years there were few reports on these seemingly uncharted lands. John Gunther’s bestselling 1949 memoir, Death Be Not Proud, about the death from cancer of his brilliant 17-year-old son, is a notable exception. Then, by the end of the 20th century, book-length accounts of illness were suddenly everywhere: more than thirty ...”

“... events in France began to match his apocalyptic forebodings, and even when, in 1792 and 1793, Pitt took counter-seditious measures in England and entered into armed conflict with France. Mitchell comments that at the end of the period covered by this volume, ‘as Burke withdrew to the seclusion of Beaconsfield in 1794, he had to recognise that his massive ...”

“... the propaganda and makes a fair and sensible speech on the Middle East – such as Governor John Connally in 1980 – is taught a sharp lesson. Jewish Americans make up only 2.7 per cent of the population of the United States, but partly because of their concentration in some pivotal states and mainly because of their influence on the American media and ...”

“... day rue. Monarchs showed their teeth in the Renaissance. Assaults by Tudor governments on Oxford took the form of periodic purgings of heterodox faculty, the requirement of subscription by laymen to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and the substitution of oligarchic constitutions in college and university for the more democratic Medieval ...”

“... young wives, or Esther Summer-son-style dependent relatives, were equally ignorant when they first took up their duties of household management. But they at least had a copy of the book; they read it; and they were the normal conduit by which the knowledge in it reached their employees. There was an educational potential here, both of self and of others, which ...”

“... at Mahoney when she brings coffee in on a serving tray, but otherwise ignore her. Mike Nichols and John Hersey win grudging approval – the former for giving her a nice tip, the latter for his kindly, slightly alcoholic smile (‘He had the look of a person who understood other people, who wanted to hear what they had to say’). Joseph Alsop, making chitchat ...”

“... world’s most polluted cities, and the life they lead there is mean and desolate. Four million took part in the 87,000 protests recorded last year, mainly against illegal land seizures. In the vast showrooms of Armani and Ferrari, a new elite shops hard to prove that, as Deng declared, ‘to get rich is glorious.’ Once you’re there, the other ...”

“... his children should be as unsystematic as possible. The schooling of the two first-born brothers took them in its initial seven years to a dozen different schools in New York and to as many tutors. After that, they were to enjoy the same variety of educational experience during five years’ wandering in England, France, Switzerland and Germany. James revels ...”

“... on the Democrats for congressional support. Elite leadership of the Republican Party collapsed. John McCain chose the shockingly unqualified Sarah Palin as a running mate in the 2008 election because she was hugely popular with the Republican base, who revelled in the outrage she triggered among liberals. Barack Obama’s victory in that election only ...”

“... and Philistines who, unlike the Jews, were never deported. They remained in Palestine (which took its name from the Philistines) and their descendants formed, and still form, the core of the indigenous population. In the seventh century, the Muhammadan Arabs brought with them their government, their language and their religion, and a majority of the ...”

“... hanging about urinals or showing my aged genitals to girls.’ It’s clear that sexual fantasies took literary form too, even before Maurice – though again we will never know what they were like. At the end of 1911 he notes: ‘Like writing erotic short stories, some of which may be good.’ He shows one to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, who is ...”

“... My Father Died for This, the remarkable book he has produced with his wife, Abigail Calata (they took it in turns to write different sections), he can offer only an imaginary reconstruction of the murders.* He pieces the story together from partial records, from conversations with people who had first-hand knowledge of the security apparatus, and from the ...”

“... Fisher’s book as New English Grammar, which was in fact the title of a work by the enterprising John Kirkby, who almost certainly plagiarised Fisher’s book for his own. It was Kirkby rather than Fisher who was long given the dubious honour of being the first grammarian to claim that indefinite nouns are referred to with the pronoun ‘he’. The true ...”