“... The American philosopher John Dewey thought that democracy should be like a giant conversation: the nation talking to itself about its hopes and fears and listening to what other people have to say. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for Dewey, he never got to hear what such a conversation might sound like, because the technology wasn’t available ...”

“... onlookers? If we insist that these disasters happened to humans, because of humans, can humanism be persevered with? Or is a faith in humanism now wishful thinking? Perhaps our best chance of advancing through the minefield is to be a fool, to kid ourselves, and try to think of courage.The Vietnam War, a film made ...”

“... one of his most famous essays tells its own story. Without the experiences enjoyed or endured by Eric Blair, Etonian, colonial enforcer, schoolteacher, down-and-out, grocer, infantryman, there would have been no George Orwell, writer. But much of what we know about Blair, we know from Orwell. And it’s not just a matter of what he did when and ...”

“... predecessors, he is effectively without a job until the throne becomes vacant – which may not be until well into the next century. Meanwhile there is no longer an empire to provide him with the appropriate apprenticeship of a proconsular posting, and he is understandably eager to do more than accompany his wife on her shopping trips. But while his ...”

“... the writing need only offer a clue to the presence. Paul de Man said enough memorable things to be quoted like scripture by the susceptible, and one of the things he said was about quotation: Citer, c’est penser. It is fair to conclude that in his last years he was a guru. The effects can ...”

“... My favourite memory of Roy Jenkins dates from a golden July evening during the Warrington by-election. He is standing in the front garden of a council house, deep in conversation with an elderly Labour housewife, for whose support he is canvassing. Stooping slightly, and with a courtly gravitas that would not have seemed out of place at a European Summit, he is explaining why the ‘fluctooations’ which have characterised British economic policy for the last ten years have done so much damage to our international credit ...”

“... The Road to Utopia was trodden by many star-struck pilgrims before Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour made their celluloid expedition there in the 1940s. Sir Thomas More, who first wrote of the place, lost his head completely, for non-Utopian reasons, and since then a succession of charismatic cranks, frenzied philosophers and visionary vegetarians have aspired to realise heaven upon earth while more usually anticipating hell ...”

“... is at last possible to survey his oeuvre as a whole: two volumes of Complete Poems were published by Martin Brian and O’Keeffe in 1978, and Penguin, in keeping with their best traditions, have risked issuing them in paperback. And it is coming to seem that the fault lay as much with the narrow criteria of the critics as with the ambitions of MacDiarmid’s ...”

“... the delight and the horror in what is sometimes called a profession or an art, as if its risks can be controlled. An actor can be anyone, if he can stand the pace of change and its rootlessness. Cinema as a medium urges us to view ourselves as actors presenting ourselves. So Marlon Brando could ...”

“... of rousing huzzahs and declarations of eternal brotherhood. The rapturous welcome received by the mutineers confirms that already, in June 1905, momentum was starting to build towards the triumph of October 1917. But where did the Potemkin go? To the neutral Romanian port of Constanza. There, after several futile attempts to refuel and resupply the ...”

“... have been headed for the White House in his own right. But he has no regrets. Who would want to be president these days? He thinks the federal government is where good ideas go to die. Cities like Chicago are where it’s at. It just takes mayors like him to make it happen. The Nation City was published at the end of February, a few days before the US ...”

“... in Israel-Palestine’. Zion began life as a hill in Jerusalem, as a place already overdetermined by the pressure of a present and future politics, a place to which to return, or to establish authentically for the first time. According to Rose, the history of this figment has never been simple or settled but has always been riven ...”

“... Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos have given rise to interpretative bad faith on a scale unusual even by the lofty standards of literary criticism. The reason for this is not some special failing on the part of Pound’s adherents, but rather the burden of expectation laid from the outset on a sequence of 11 poems written in the US Army’s Disciplinary Training ...”

“... on its merits, and exercise some discretion if necessary? General rules, we think, are likely to be discriminatory, because they cannot take account of special circumstances. Individuals, by contrast, can use their own judgment, and make exceptions. However, as Frederick Schauer argues in his excellent book, though we are ...”

“... as part of the opposition to a right-wing, anti-communist government. Orbán, who was chosen to be the leader of the parliamentary group, was an effective manager and strategist, though Szelényi felt his ‘restlessness and impatience were a bit much’ (as were his ‘constant football metaphors’). He was also touchy: when she and two other Fidesz ...”