“... and influence is sought in a periodic ballyhooing of the ‘trans-Atlantic alliance’, as in Philip Bobbitt’s Terror and Consent (2008), which Niall Ferguson in an enthusiastic review claimed will ‘be read with pleasure by men of a certain age, class and education from Manhattan’s Upper East Side to London’s West End’. Ferguson himself is homo ...”

“... Gospel According to Matthew (1964), which featured the philosopher Giorgio Agamben as the disciple Philip, the novelist Natalia Ginzburg as Mary of Bethany and Susanna, Pasolini’s mother, as the older Virgin Mary. A few years later, Pasolini wrote warmly about Morante’s Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini (1968), a dramatic poetry cycle which has just been ...”

“... closer to the outlines of Theroux’s history. Neither book is imaginable without the precedent of Philip Roth’s Zuckerman Unbound (1981) – in which Zuckerman’s succès de scandale Carnovsky stands in for Portnoy’s Complaint – and The Counterlife (1986). Theroux followed Roth into a hall of mirrors from which it is hard to find the exit. Roth’s ...”

“... marital devotion and hints of what was to come. Early in December 1884, he wrote a brief note to Philip Griffiths, a 20-year-old from a wealthy family in Birmingham: ‘My dear Philip, I have sent a photo of myself for you to the care of Mr MacKay which I hope you will like and in return for it you are to send me one of ...”

“... the Rainbow Warrior has not been forgotten in New Zealand, and there is a deep conviction that the French do not care, and cannot understand that anybody else does. In New Zealand – as when resident in the United States of America – he found himself in a culture governed by ‘Western’ values and given shape by then historic (and imperial) expansion: yet ...”

“... an operation before she could conceive. She waited until Harry left on a business trip, sold a French war bond given to her by an uncle and went under the knife. Soon she was pregnant.When Schwartz learned that his birth was the result of a deception it strengthened the feeling he had struggled with all his life: that perhaps he should not have existed at ...”

“... but someone decided to add extra pointed drama to the occasion – probably the abbot himself, Philip Ballard alias Hawford (medieval Benedictines tended to acquire a second monastic surname, often the place they had come from). The life of a monastery centres on worship, an intricate performance of chanted services rhythmically punctuating every day of ...”

“... row, awaiting a Supreme Court decision on their execution. The kingdom’s defenders, including Philip Hammond, who as British foreign secretary at the time of Nimr’s execution said, ‘Let us be clear, first of all, that these people were convicted terrorists,’ like to point out Saudi Arabia doesn’t execute as many people as Iran – in 2014, there ...”

“... sounds modest and practicable. Hartman, who rebukes Matthew Arnold for deprecating French thought, says sternly that ‘concepts of national character are dangerous or comic,’ but proceeds immediately to ignore the danger and the comedy: ‘but this Anglo-American conservatism ...’ In fact, he has all along proceeded by using concepts of ...”

“... and unmechanised farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when ...”

“... in theories of socialism and was perfectly familiar with abstract thought. With her competence in French and German, she must have read many of the same books that Dostoevsky read. But the kind of questions her characters put to themselves and to each other, though sometimes lofty, never cast doubt on basic principles such as the notion of betterment or the ...”

“... in his office and in the same way the pupils of another candidate for secular sainthood, the French philosopher Simone Weil, saw to it that their adored teacher did not suffer the consequences of a practical un-wisdom even more hopeless than Kafka’s. One cannot say that Kafka’s marvelling at mundane accomplishments was not genuine, was a ploy. The ...”

“... Her Majesty’s, the Lyceum and Covent Garden, often presided over by foreign conductors (usually French), and attended by a youthful and convivial audience, who stood up and walked around while the music was being played (hence the name), and were charged less than they would have been for a formal concert. The programmes were appropriately light and ...”

“... in mind – feature in practically every round-up of suspects: figures such as Clement Greenberg, Philip Rahv, Lionel Trilling. But outdoing them all in his credentials for the title-role is Wilson, the freelance writer who never held a regular academic position and who, it is claimed, wrote authoritatively on questions of literature, culture and ...”

“... and trouser-changing unmatched since Roberto Rossellini made The Taking by Power by Louis XIV for French television. Triggered by an archive clip of his maternal grandfather, Herbert Morrison, another ennobled socialist cabinet minister, Mandelson launched into a memoir of cycling around Hendon, committee room to polling station, bearing leaflets, carrying ...”