“... shall be gradually prepared to admit their real existence among us.’ But others, including George Washington and John Adams, already regarded the unconfined soul of Shakespeare as belonging more securely to the land of the free than to the land of his birth, and the first American edition of the Complete Works – a piracy of an English text, but with ...”

“... eyes rise up before me … yes, these tired eyes, athirst for death.In Young Rilke and His Time, George Schoolfeld calls this woman ‘an advance member of [Rilke’s] rich gallery of women variously beset’. The recast piece is called ‘Fantasy’ and subtitled ‘a poem in prose’. Enough already.The second ‘Emigrant-Ship (Naples)’ is both immediate ...”

“... victories, are themselves uncertain about how to end it. What will there be to pick up when George Bush leaves office in two years’ time? If he lasts that long.Conclusions and opinions aren’t Woodward’s strongest suit. He offers no general summations to his three books, no views on the people he interviews. He allows his subjects to speak for ...”

“... taste of his own, Haitink became the victim of those who had to decide things for him. In Michael Waldman’s unsparing television documentary The House, the hapless Haitink is seen to be flabbergasted as the head of the opera company, Nicholas Payne, tries to sell him the director Richard Jones’s scheme for the Ring. In Die Walküre Fricka would ...”

“... on for advice, and when he arrived at the grotto he received a visitation from the Archangel Michael, who ordered him to consecrate a Christian altar on the site. It’s not known what happened to the man with the arrow in his forehead, but the result of his misadventure was the famous Santuario di San Michele. In 999 AD, the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto ...”

“... active and gentlemanly-looking; his age is about 30 years.’ Such was the picture of the young Michael Davitt, Fenian suspect, produced by the police detective who was watching him in 1869. (In fact, he was working-class, and 24 years old.) Somewhat later, after seven years’ penal servitude, he was seen by the Irish Parliamentarian F.H.O’Donnell as ...”

“... loves. He is a superb praiser, so it is a pity that he should ever be driven beyond his patience. Michael Hamburger’s poems have always been in the shadows of his translations and critical essays: mainly, I think, because he has acute misgivings about the autonomy of language. He believes in inspiration, that a poet’s words are what ‘some power behind ...”

“... in a Sunday newspaper in two days’ time. How can I not be manic? The next day I met the poet Michael Horowitz in the local health-food shop. The last time I bumped into him, in the same place a few months before, I was about to deliver my completed manuscript. Today, I asked him to my launch party. ‘Maybe I could review your book,’ he said. ‘That ...”

“... idea of a modern politician turning down such a soundbite opportunity makes one sigh. Similarly, Michael Jago reproduces part of an interview with Honor Balfour in 1967: Balfour: What was the greatest achievement of the Labour government? Attlee: Indian independence. Balfour: What was the greatest problem you faced? Attlee: Russia. Balfour: What was the ...”

“... obscurity begins with Nietzsche, who, cried up along with Pindar himself and Hölderlin by Stefan George and friends in their war for a Hellenised German (or Germanised Greek) Geist against Wilamowitzian philology, twists an adjuration from the Second Pythian, genoi’ hoios essi mathôn, ‘having learned [from me] what manner of man you are, live up to ...”

“... was accompanied by a widespread fascination with ‘Gypsies’ in popular culture. Klaus-Michael Bogdal, a professor of German literature at the University of Bielefeld at the time of the riots, was struck by the contradiction. In the early 1990s, Germans were taking up flamenco lessons. The French-Gitano band Gipsy Kings was hitting the top of the ...”

“... has always known how to look after himself, would agree. The unsuccessful candidate was the late George MacBeth. The Chairman admits he was uneasy about this appointment; indeed he uncharacteristically consulted me, as Chairman of the Literature Panel, although I was in America at the time. I cabled back ‘Better the devil you know,’ and Osborne began the ...”

“... Nussbaum that democracy requires a strong national identity on the part of its citizens, and Michael Walzer insists that his circle of allegiances (‘spheres of affection’) starts, not with the outermost periphery, but at the ‘centre’. In a book with the same title, For Love of Country, Maurizio Viroli offers further, more sustained reflections on ...”

“... all he was content to show, for more than thirty years of story-writing. One thinks, he said, of George Sand turning out volume after volume while never once neglecting a love affair, never missing one puff of her hookah. Well, no matter, O’Faolain has done many other things and written many other books besides his collections of stories. He has been, he ...”

“... to the authority of the ancients, even as they embarked on a revolutionary political experiment. George Washington, for example, identified himself with Cato of Utica, whom the 18th-century British knew best through the medium of Addison’s popular tragedy Cato (1713). Lines from the play found their way into Washington’s letters and speeches, and, in ...”