“... a play he hopes to write about a third-century Corsican tight-rope walker. On occasions Roussel took active steps to preserve his own literary papers, depositing various manuscripts with his financial adviser, Eugène Leiris – father of Michel – not all of which have come to light. By the time of his departure for Sicily, however, Roussel seems to have ...”

“... more or less the practice of editors ever since. The six drafts were, however, printed together in John Murray’s edition of 1896, and Womersley has taken the lead in insisting that this is the source the student of Gibbon must use. He is right; but Murray’s volume has never been reprinted, and we need a new edition, whether electronic or ...”

“... and obesity as ‘an excessive accumulation of body fat’. During the 1970s, the Body Mass Index took hold, the ratio of the weight of a person in kilogrammes divided by the square of their height in metres. In 1998, the World Health Organisation, in company with numerous national bodies, defined being overweight as having a BMI of more than 25, and obesity ...”

“... speak, under their feet. But it is hard not to speculate about what might have been different had John Smith lived to become prime minister in Blair’s stead. Whether you approve of it or not, Blair’s success in outflanking the traditional party of the right from within the traditional party of the left was achieved with remarkable rhetorical and political ...”

“... translation is talking about too many other things. I was offered the job of general editor and took it. Everything I suggested was agreed to; but we couldn’t find enough translators, so we had, in the end, ten translators for 16 volumes. And there was a practising analyst involved: me. When I was offered the general editorship, and when I accepted it, I ...”

“... with another dog, Emily waded in at once while ‘several other animals,’ the Haworth stationer John Greenwood reported, ‘who thought themselves men, were standing looking on like cowards as they were.’ She forced the dogs apart, ‘dredg[ing] well their noses with pepper’ and sent them packing. When Branwell drunkenly set light to his ...”

“... with High Windows and inscribed it: ‘From a drought to a flood.’What a put-down.Lowell took it as a compliment.I’m sure he would. From this costive Englishman.Yes, a tribute to his fertility.You carried your preoccupation with Lowell from the ‘Review’ to the ‘New Review’, didn’t you? How did the latter magazine come into existence?The ...”

“... She said that from the time she was five years old to the time she was 12, her father regularly took her from her bed in the middle of the night and carried her out to his barn. There would be many men there, and some women; they all wore gowns and hats ‘resembling a Viking hat with horns’. There would be blood every-where, and pitchforks in the ...”

“... person, once launched on adult life? Spurling observes of the biography he produced after the war, John Aubrey and His Friends, that ‘for all the author’s evident respect and affection, its subject never comes to life as Aubrey makes his own subjects do.’ How far can the same be said of her account of him? Good-natured, amusing, affable, to many he also ...”

“... with Cameron’s description of this as a ‘slight fall’. After the letters were published, John McDonnell hailed the prime minister as a convert to the anti-austerity cause. The unedifying spectacle of a prime minister ignorant of the impact of his own government’s policies, or so taken in by his ministers’ rhetoric that he could not reconcile ...”

“... like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation.But when the younger Bush took office he appointed foreign policy advisers who took a less sanguine view of America’s situation in the world. Bush’s war cabinet and its support staff saw nothing but ‘growing threats to the American peace ...”

“... gave them debentures worth £3000, a not inconsiderable sum in those days. At one point, he took an ailing Vivienne alone on holiday to Torquay and then, called back to London after five days, paid Eliot’s train fare and hotel expenses so that she wouldn’t want for company. And while Russell was still in Torquay, he received yet another letter of ...”

“... we shall see, involved first falling more deeply asleep. Work on this project stopped in 1929. He took it up again when he returned to Paris, a refugee, in 1934. The notecards multiplied, new dossiers were started, prospectuses for a book now grandly entitled ‘Paris, Capital of the 19th Century’ were sent to friends. Baudelaire loomed larger in ...”

“... around the world. The starriest guest at the rally was Robinson’s admirer Elon Musk, who took part by video link. Simion’s presence was barely noticed amid the British MAGA wannabes eagerly partaking of the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. Simion himself paid tribute to Kirk in his brief speech. He marched onto the temporary stage on Whitehall wearing a ...”

“... foreigner in crumpled battledress. He came to know Spender, Orwell, MacNeice, Philip Toynbee and John Lehmann, and was invited to their parties. The Tribune left-wingers adored him; Michael Foot (as he put it himself) ‘fell an immediate swooning victim to his wit, charm and inordinate capacity for alcohol’, and to his murderous style of ...”