“... by alien-hand syndrome. One of his hands appeared to act independently. ‘His left hand would close a drawer as soon as the right hand had opened it, or undo buttons that had just been done up.’ Before my operation I made advances to a nurse in the lift at the Policlinico Hospital. A quarter of a century on, I can remember Gilly’s ...”

“... for Variety describes present-day actors as ‘fey’, ‘goofy’ and ‘boy-men’, and Frank Miller (director of The Spirit: ‘Rookie cop returns from the beyond as The Spirit’) believes that ‘Hollywood is great at producing male actors but sucks at producing men.’ Kanfer backs his columnists up with the opinion of Harvey C. Mansfield, ‘a ...”

“... prose that takes Rosen through a generous amount of mainly instrumental and vocal music at very close range indeed. What must be said immediately is how well, how enviably well, Rosen knows this music, its secrets, its astonishing harmonic and structural innovations, and the problems and pleasures of its performance: he writes not as a musicologist but as ...”

“... royal relationships across the generations have often been strained and distant, rather than close and affectionate. When Victoria and Albert married off their children, it was with dynastic considerations in mind rather than emotional fulfilment or personal happiness. Most eldest sons, forever waiting to become king, have not been on the best of terms ...”

“... the same time neglecting the promotion of policies that might actually make citizens better off. A close reading of Offer’s book will make plain the poverty of imagination and wilful neglect of evidence that this blinkered approach to public policy represents. Offer’s key insight, from which most of his analysis derives, is that ‘economic resources are ...”

“... It was, and remains, a shocking and horrible moment. Ian Buruma was born in The Hague in 1951, close to where Van Gogh grew up, and emigrated from the Netherlands in 1975, moving on to spend time in Japan and the East, as well as in the US and Britain. He is the sort of intelligent, calm and reasonable observer that we like to associate with our image of ...”

“... play The Weir has the same structure as Pinter’s The Homecoming (a man brings a woman into a close-knit group with unpredictable results), but in fact consists of four ghost stories told by a group assembled in a small rural bar on a winter’s night, three of which (told by the men) seem false, and one of which (told by the woman) appears to be ...”

“... to the English reader because it leaves open a question about agency which our language tends to close: it is neither ‘I illuminate myself’ nor ‘I am being illuminated,’ but somewhere undecidably between the two (Ungaretti is fond of such constructions and of the uncertainties they bring into focus). The timescale is no more definite: released from ...”

“... Jewish identity by religion alone). In 1956 she became foreign minister, a position she held for close to a decade, under Ben-Gurion and then Levi Eshkol. She proved to be a nimble operator, earning a reputation for diplomatic intransigence.Meir’s commitment to Jewish interests was unwavering. After Israel’s conquest of the West Bank, the Gaza ...”

“... is present so that they can determine the pecking order of flattery.Patterson can be disarmingly frank. Earlier this year, she offered a mid-term assessment to a visiting Euro-intelligence chief. While Musharraf had been unreliable, saying one thing in Washington and doing its opposite back home, Zardari was perfect: ‘He does everything we ask.’ What is ...”

“... me in the eye. ‘Do you believe in God?’ He asks. His cold eyes bore into me, demanding a frank answer … ‘I’ll believe in what you want me to believe in.’ The novel’s short middle section is an extended fugue, separating the hectic events of Rasa’s day from the dreaded wedding that evening. Here there are more expansive flashbacks to ...”

“... wrong thing to say.’Compared to its predecessors, Lean Fall Stand – written in a conventional close third person – is technically unassuming. There are points when the subject matter calls for something more inventive, however, as in the series of diminishing paragraphs that depict Doc’s stroke: the first runs for six and a half pages, the last ...”

“... anthologies. In other words (though Hill does not use this term), Pound’s poem comes dangerously close to kitsch. This raises the question of how far ‘Envoi (1919)’ may be read as a critique of a culture in which certain forms of beauty seem unavailable. As Hill implies, the melopoeia of the poem is drawn into logopoeia since its verbal music stands in ...”

“... wheat only rustled through its rosary once more. The most obvious influence on Ford is Frank O’Hara, with whom he shares a tendency to exclaim (‘What a life!’, ‘Hurrah!’, ‘What a thought!’, ‘Hush!’, ‘Hark!’), a desire to register the vertiginous rush of the present moment – for which driving with no hands is a vivid ...”

“... MREs when they discovered that Moslem extremists in Somalia were backed by Sudan, which itself had close ties with Iran. Other rumours suggest that the White House was galvanised by Washington lobbying. Last November, Fred Cuny, styled as the Red Adair of the relief business, persuaded Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the Defence Department’s policy ...”