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“... antagonism to Bush’s deliberate pace and prose. Like those establishment figures, epitomised by Henry Kissinger, who are the self-conscious heirs of the Anglo-European conservative tradition in foreign policy, with its emphasis on balance and order, liberal commentators were moved by a sensation of danger impending from a massive convulsion within the ...”

“... and his girlfriend Aubade lie around, immobilised, thinking about the Laws of Thermodynamics, Henry Adams, heat death, and the imminent decline of all energy. It is a mostly charming, sometimes tiresome showoff piece, but the way it is laid out offers, as does the apartment itself, a neat diagram of how in the novels Pynchon apportions things on a more ...”

“... book because they are studying polished texts of the alliterative revival, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or of Richard II’s court, pre-eminently by Chaucer. But, though acknowledging that modern readers are trained to admire Chaucer best among writers of her period, Coleman spends little time on him, and grounds her discussion instead on a more ...”

“... being named Astané who was inevitably accompanied by a creature with the head of a cabbage, a big green eye in the middle and ‘five or six pairs of paws, or ears all about’. Sometimes Astané took hold of Smith’s index finger and made her write Martian words, such as dodé né ci haudan té mes métiche Astané ké dé mé véche, later translated ...”

“... Box files. Sticky white circles to reinforce the holes made by paper punches. Paper punches. Green string tags to go through the holes. Labels. So many blank labels. White, coloured, all shapes and sizes. And a mechanical labeller with plastic tape to emboss. More than enough supplies so that if a thing is done wrongly, spoiled or not quite ...”

“... few stray bons mots about the monarchy, some connection with the Economist (which keeps his memory green in the pseudonym of a regular columnist) – that is as much as most of us can dredge up. What precisely was he great as: essayist, critic, economist, political analyst? Well, not really any of them under a rigorous definition of those trades, but a bit of ...”

“... scarcely read the newspapers, relying on a press summary prepared for her by her spokesman Henry James, a career civil servant who had worked for both Heath and Wilson and was as grave and imposing a figure as his literary namesake. When James was succeeded by Bernard Ingham, who had worked for Barbara Castle, presentation certainly hotted up. Ingham ...”

“... led many to label him an insular amateur of limited ambition. As incoming prime minister in 1905, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was reluctant to make Grey foreign secretary because of ‘his ignorance of foreign countries and foreign languages’, a judgment partly founded in the belief that Grey’s only Continental trip had amounted to two glum days in Paris.The ...”

“... sex of the Marquise, in those permissive times. Then came a Cinderella-esque marriage to (Baron) Henry de Jouvenal, editor of Le Matin, later a politician of considerable distinction. One thing about Colette interests me: when did she stop lying about her age? The voluptuous dancer was pushing 40 when she married De Jouvenal: ‘But the registry office has ...”

“... I think.’ Tite Street was the family home; he did not return there. The spectre of Wilde haunted Henry James in the first two months of 1895, and James’s correspondence gives us a much richer sense than Wilde’s does of what the opening of a new play could mean at the turn of the 19th century. ‘Who shall deny the immense authority of the theatre,’ he ...”

“... used a bottle of prescription olive oil to clean the salad bowl. Now look!’ A line of tank-green bottles stretched into the distance. ‘Choice!’ she said.Supermarket people like to use certain words. When you are with them in the fruit department they all say ‘fresh’ and ‘juicy’ and ‘variety’ and ‘good farming practices’. (Or as head ...”

“... Homer and Virgil and Chaucer accompanied Stendhal and Jane Austen, Dickens and Tolstoy and Henry James; and near the end was one poem that certainly might, in its intensity, be described as ‘short’ – Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This almost token poem, a magnificent simple affair that most of us did at school, is the world’s most ...”

“... his subjects – close enough to capture the warmth radiating from their skin. Novelists such as Henry James and Proust seem to want to reduce the distance between themselves and their characters virtually to nothing – to bore into their characters’ skulls and take us with them. Cather, rather more conservatively, locates herself about four or five feet ...”

“... is changed to various colours. They imitate thus, among other things, bunches of grapes with green tendrils.’ Tennyson’s passion for accuracy of detail is alive even in his excesses and absurdities: the description of a steamboat which he dropped from both ‘The Gardener’s Daughter’ and ‘Audley Court’, ‘The snoring funnel whizzed with ...”

“... throne. The geisha have been booked by telephone, The whisky brought, the raw fish on the ice, The green tea boiled, the saké in its stone Warmed to a turn, and seaweed, root and spice Await their last repose, the tub of nutcrisp rice. The scene is set, and soon a wall will slide, And in will run, professional as hell, Our geisha team, brisk as a soccer ...”