“... was a perversity. The coloniser and the colonised were locked together – and constructed – by a fatal dialectic. There could be no reciprocity, only war between the two, until the latter achieved freedom. The pursuit of freedom lies at the heart of Écrits sur l’aliénation et la liberté, an immense new volume of ...”

“... is what students of currency call ‘fiat’ money, money whose value has been willed into being by the state. The value of fiat money is an act of faith. There are quirks to this. In the case of the pound coin, if we ask how much it’s worth, the answer is obvious: a pound is worth a pound. It shouldn’t ...”

“... anecdotes or fond reminiscences. Black List, Section H had been published the previous year by Southern Illinois University Press. It was the only book by Francis Stuart in any Dublin bookshop. Because it had come from America, it cost much more than a normal hardback. Slowly, over the next year or so, I met people ...”

“... indignant, defiant and, in respect of the Ukrainian troops fighting at the front, gnawed by guilt. An aspect of that defiance, and a source of guilt, is the refusal to renounce comfort or pleasure. The greatest source of resilience against the shock, anxiety and grief of invasion, Tatyana Li, a psychotherapist in Kyiv, told me, is the universal ...”

“... mirror’. Chris Guthrie, the heroine of Gibbon’s trilogy A Scots Quair, does this five times, by Murray’s reckoning, in Sunset Song (1932), six times in Cloud Howe, published the next year, and eight times in Grey Granite, which appeared a year after that. None of the students owned up to the habit, ‘although women’s bedrooms are surely warmer now ...”

“... the eyeholes, her mouth unsmiling under the little slit. She looks as though she has been forced by agents of an authoritarian, anti-individualistic ideology to cover her face in a way she doesn’t want to, but is putting up with it because she doesn’t think she has a choice. At least she’s wearing the right flag. Last spring, Park View was in the news ...”

“... re-election in 1959 of a Conservative government under Harold Macmillan that this stance changed. By 1960, the poor performance of the British economy compared with those of the six countries that had created the European Economic Community (EEC) was plain and, strongly encouraged by the Kennedy administration in ...”

“... of memory. Perhaps even a memorial. Except that I don’t believe in biographies and advise you to be especially sceptical about this one, written, one has to say, under the stress of illness and in extreme haste. Self-perception is distorted enough in the healthy, God knows what it is like in those gripped by terminal ...”

“... He left three accounts of their meeting in Algiers; some of what he said was later hotly denied by Douglas. The first account, written the following day, was to his mother. He explained to her that he had, after much consideration, decided to return to the hotel and miss his train, as he did not want Wilde to think he was avoiding him. ‘This terrible ...”

“... Six years after the death of 72 people in the fire that consumed Grenfell Tower in London, fed by cheap cladding that acted like solid petrol, the owners of the freehold on Morris’s building and the Manchester fire service had decided it was too dangerous for the occupants of its 107 flats to stay in their homes. They were told to evacuate at once and ...”

“... certain to go ahead early in my time frame (most trials are plea-bargained out), and I had to be in New Orleans for a talk three weeks later. That gave me the bare bones of an itinerary.I left New York at the beginning of October and headed for Chicago. The day before I arrived, ICE agents conducted a raid on a South Side apartment building, with agents ...”

“... he trample all over the distinctions, the reticences and borderlines, you set so much store by in your own verse?Yes. I suppose that is where the whole idea of confessional poetry came from. There are two factors with Lowell: one is that his family is a famous one, he had a famous name. So to have a Lowell write derisively about his father as Lowell the ...”

“... of the 21st century as a paragon of the international virtues: a community of values … held up by Europeans and non-Europeans alike as an exemplar for all to emulate’.1 The reputation, he assures us, is ‘well-earned’. The same vision grips the seers of New Labour. Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century declaims the title of a manifesto ...”

“... to a reluctant end. Clear-sighted about what was coming under Yeltsin, Furman would henceforward be the best native analyst of Russia’s post-communism. But that was not his only change of direction in 1991. Political commentary, punctual or long-range, was one thing, comparative inquiry of the kind that had driven his studies of religion was another. Where ...”

“... Spain, past the Bay of Biscay, through the Channel and into the North Sea. It was bound for Hull. By lunchtime on 6 May, more than a month after setting out from Vietnam, it was steaming up the Humber.I wanted to confirm what was on board, so I looked on the internet and found a pub, the Humber Tavern, in the village of Paull, that seemed to have a good view ...”