“... essayists and tellers of unpopular truths, and now, spurred by the appearance four years ago of Peter Davison’s marvellously thorough complete edition of Orwell’s writings (and no doubt with an eye on Orwell’s centenary, which falls this year), he has written a short book entirely devoted to telling us, as the title of the US edition has it, ‘Why ...”

“... When the name of a present-day Catholic theologian becomes familiar to the larger reading public, it is rarely because of his theology. Most often it is because he has been made vivid as a character in one of those miniature scenarios about religion which still fascinate the ostensibly secularised mind. Jean Daniélou’s fine book on the doctrine of the Trinity passed largely unnoticed: his death in circumstances which suggested that there might be a scandal to be unearthed secured the immediate attention of journalists all over the world ...”

“... of Albertine de Staël, probably Constant’s daughter) gives an account of one such reading, at Madame Récamier’s, where Constant broke into sobs as he neared the end: everyone present, already very moved, began crying as well; soon the room was full of weeping and moaning; then suddenly, as the result of a psychological mechanism which is ...”

“... remember how the moment of perception – and idolatry of the sense datum – dominated painting. Reading art history, one imagines the painters of the world getting into huddles and saying: ‘Well lads, what next?’ Irwin has answered the question – having asked it of himself – several times. One of the most attractive aspects of avant-garde art is ...”

“... explain away the lack of class-consciousness among the proletariat as a whole. Capitalism, on this reading, was able to buy off the potential leaders of the working class, whose subsequent conservatism played an indispensable role in sustaining the status quo. In this form the argument has several weaknesses, which have been cogently summarised in a well-known ...”

“... afternoon in front of the computer, debugging a program, or working on an article. If they do any reading at all it’s likely to be a matter of checking a reference in a scientific journal before citing it in a footnote. Perhaps they return a few phone calls or reply to computer mail. Von Neumann’s legacy is at the centre of a number of the pieces of New ...”

“... except by acclamation, persuasion and the marketplace. This view of things must colour any reading of Roos’s Early Impressionism and the French State. She writes about the Salon and its politics, which are peripheral if one has already decided that no politics or institution had much to do with the large-scale changes which took place in ...”

“... that busy Treasury officials did not sit around debating what they had learned in their bedtime reading of the General Theory. It was a work, as Keynes said in the preface, ‘chiefly addressed to my fellow economists’. That certainly included Hawtrey, the only professional economist in the Treasury, though correspondingly removed from the hurly-burly of ...”

“... budgets. But it was what American Keynesians often preached, and Schumpeter was not alone in his reading of Keynes’s message. Nor was Schumpeter egregious in seizing on the famous observation about being dead in the long run. It obviously showed him, and demonstrated for the benefit of others, Keynes’s short-term irresponsibility. Yet the point that ...”

“... No one who has read Crabbe’s poetry has ever denied the power of his portraits or his stories. ‘Peter Grimes’, one of the embedded sections of his great work The Borough (1810), is justly famous, and, were it better known, the story ‘Delay has danger’, part of the very uneven Tales of the Hall (1819), would be known for what it is, a masterpiece ...”

“... fingers and hands move – this book shows it. The section on Bach in the set of essays edited by Peter Williams mainly deals with matters of performance in a more conventional way. The most interesting of the essays is by the editor himself, on ‘Figurae in the Keyboard Works of Scarlatti, Handel and Bach’. The problem is that in the 18th century ...”

“... killed himself over some more private misery, and before he could even have scanned my poor barbs.)Reading Jan Dalley’s very scrupulous if slightly solemn book, I was visited by the same sense of pervasive pointlessness. Here again one encounters teak-headedness and conceit among the overdogs. Here again one learns how vulgar bigotry can be veneered with ...”

“... all that was left of the old neighbourhood was a chemical factory. One of his mates at school was Peter Hook, who ended up playing bass in the band; Hook likes to describe himself as an ‘oik’. Curtis was more bookish, and isolated. Joy Division’s music was bleak, full of frustration, fear and guilt. They were produced by Martin Hannett, whose studio ...”

“... soul-stripping illness whose details Bayley did not spare. After her death in 1999 things sped up. Peter Conradi’s portly authorised biography was smartly challenged by A.N. Wilson’s slimmer unauthorised memoir, Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her, a witty, affectionate, impious account which made disturbing suggestions about Bayley’s feelings towards his ...”

“... came across versions of themselves or their foibles being lavishly ridiculed. During a communal reading of the sixth volume of Sir Charles Grandison, she came to a passage she heartily wished she could avoid. Charlotte’s mockery of Aunt Nell’s treasured but rather pathetic letter-case (containing ‘but a few letters’, and filled instead with faded ...”