“... then, not a peep Till the day of the Resurrection. Empty Barbershop In pursuit of happiness, you may yet Draw close to it momentarily In one of these two leather-bound chairs With the help of scissors and a comb, Draped to the chin with a long white sheet, While your head slips through The invisible barber’s greasy fingers Making your hair stand up ...”

“... first words were ‘It is very beautiful over there.’ John Ford’s first words were ‘May I please have a cigar?’ Ulysses S. Grant’s first word was ‘Water.’ Prince Henry’s first words were ‘I would say something but I cannot utter.’ Washington Irving’s first words were ‘When will this end?’ James Joyce’s first words were ...”

“... scattered light a trawl from pale yellow to darkish brown and when peat is washed down, sunlight may lose itself, cannot scatter and the lake becomes black. I can tell you, impasto giving weight, how to make a profession of mute things, but remain at a loss to figure how the weight of water can be so sinister. Newfoundland Time Round the planting of the Gort ...”

“... vague and characteristically harsh’, Spurling conjectures that with ingenuous good looks, he may have suffered from unwanted advances in a setting where homosexuality was not unusual. Certainly his main later complaint was the impossibility of any relation with girls, under vigilant bar by the authorities. There was also his lack of money for the lavish ...”

“... but the person you are writing to, but which yet you do not want to be destroyed, but perhaps hope may be preserved for complete strangers to read, is ineradicable. We want to confess ourselves in writing to a few friends, and we do not always want to feel that no one but those friends will ever read what we have written.Eliot’s considerable correspondence ...”

“... soldier on with no real legitimacy, while the weight of support for change builds up. The overhang may persist for a while yet, but a small event could trip the avalanche.Alastair Crooke is co-director of Conflicts Forum and has been an EU mediator with Hamas and other Islamist movements. Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution will come out next ...”

“... The example then stands as an emblem of the correct relationship between the two. Yet the case may tell us less than we might infer from Ginzburg’s use of it. In the Latin languages a single word – prova, preuve, prueba – covers what in English are distinguished as ‘proof’ and ‘evidence’. Evidence alone is not necessarily decisive: we can ...”

“... of being prickly but pusillanimous (it subsequently emerged that these facets of his personality may have been exacerbated by an undisclosed thyroid condition that also had the unfortunate side-effect of making him fat; as he got plumper, Thatcher got thinner). Heath wanted to micro-manage the economy but lacked the ability to exert his will. The new intake ...”

“... friend of Dickens’s Mrs Gamp, and Thurber was a writer before he was a cartoonist); and it may be that the ‘extra’ dimension in this cartoon came about because its essential idea had first been established by another and earlier writer. Somewhere at the back of his mind Thurber was surely remembering, with profit and perhaps with gratitude, a poem ...”

“... reason for getting out of bed in the morning, then the Western, if not the global, identity crisis may be solvable. That is where the ‘clash of civilisations’ comes in. By identifying our enemies, Huntington hopes to re-enchant the post-Cold War world, to restore our sense of purpose, and of course to raise the prestige of the military in Western ...”

“... binding – but was paid off with £12,000 and died not long afterwards in Bengal. At first, Mary may have consented to her cloistering: she was pregnant by another man, and in order to secure the child’s legitimacy would have to pretend that it had been conceived later than it had been. The baby was hidden for three months, then presented at its baptism as ...”

“... is my chosen and particular task, and provided I can make the required effort the rewards may reach the unimaginable. It is as though there is an eye at the end of my pencil, which tries, independently of my personal general-purpose eye, to penetrate a kind of obscuring veil or thickness. To break down this thickness, this deadening opacity, to elicit ...”

“... splendour of the novelist’s archives must have been adequately consoling. In the end Stannard may have sacrificed little save the explicit imprimatur (which seems to have been withheld) and the result is a superbly detailed book, patient, affectionate, sometimes funny and, as the subject peremptorily required, very intelligent.The narrative of Spark’s ...”

“... in Europe, 1560-1660, along with other pieces previously published in Past and Present. The volume may inadvertently have launched the most persistent criticism of the whole idea of a crisis: that ‘crisis’ is for the 17th century what ‘history’ is for other centuries. Hobsbawm’s theory lost currency with the decline and fall of doctrinaire Marxist ...”

“... would be more familiar with snakes than electric cables, but the simile, back-to-front though it may be, works because it shows he considers himself in unknown and potentially dangerous territory. It’s there for our benefit, not Randeep’s. Because Sahota doesn’t explain everything straightaway, or translate the Punjabi phrases he uses, or spell out the ...”