“... fascists. Any solution to the problems of the islands, unlikely scene of subversion though they may be, that recognised Argentina’s claims would have to give anyone who wished to stay some sort of guarantees. At the same time, it is clear that if a solution requires the disappearance of the Argentine armed forces from Argentina, then it must wait for ...”

“... You may not have noticed it, but this has been an important month in the shaping of our more low-grade literary values. Or so it says in the brochure in front of me: ‘Do you want to know what’s out in June? All the old ideas about readers of women’s novels. That’s what’s out, baby!’ The brochure, some twelve glossy pages of it, with a big girl in keep-fit (or is it ballet?) gear as centrefold, has been issued by Pan Books, and it inaugurates a new series of paperback novels, novels on which Pan are about to lavish ‘their biggest ever advertising campaign ...”

“... be found on the outskirts of almost any British town. Yet they are more seen than noticed, and it may take a description to bring them to mind: ‘two-storey cottages, built in groups of four or six, with medium or low-pitched roofs and little exterior decoration, set amongst gardens, trees, privet hedges and grass verges, and often laid out in cul-de-sacs or ...”

“... its expansionist and racialist implications, was never a Prussian taste. The leaders and, if they may be dignified with the term, ideologists of National Socialism were Austrians, Bavarians, Rhinelanders, occasionally Saxons, but not Prussians. Prussia had in the end a more distinguished record of resistance to Hitler than the Catholic South. And yet the ...”

“... must smoke and that those without such a predisposition must not, it follows that smoking may increase the likelihood of cancer in those with the suitable predisposition. On Eysenck’s own argument, this must be the case, since otherwise all smokers would get lung cancer. In other words, the predisposition to smoke and the predisposition to get lung ...”

“... mansions. The countryside is treated with similar neglect, and the traveller to the island may well wonder why a place with so much natural beauty deserved to suffer so intensely from the indifference of its people. As I walked one evening by the sea, I remembered Lampedusa’s description of ‘the enchantment of certain summer nights within sight of ...”

“... I don’t know why Hacking isn’t. (That’s why I called the book ‘exasperating’.) Hacking may not have an argument for scientific realism at all, as opposed to a psychological observation about what convinces us. (He may even reject this distinction.) But to understand the book one has to turn to the other side of ...”

“... British Gaullism lacked its Malraux, because I am no longer so sure. I am more worried now that it may have too many, a multitude of complex, sophisticated people, all ravaged by the fate of idealism in these cold springs that we are getting, while the rest of us accuse ourselves of not having proved sophisticated or complex enough for the perplexities of our ...”

“... hostess I asked her about the white bread, its signifying supremacy, its itinerary as a fetish, I may even have quoted Lacan. She laughed. No, it was just a mistake. Her sister had misheard her on the phone, she’d been exasperated at first but then it didn’t matter, there were too many cakes ...”

“... to a supplicant visit to a jungle snake cult, and the suggestion that, once fully recovered, he may expect to be indentured to the cultists by his grateful father. During this anxious interval, the boy comes across a book in ‘one of Lomé’s modest bookstores, run by missionaries’, which he buys and reads that morning on the beach. The book is a work ...”

“... Marseillais. Maison Empereur is a hardware shop unlike any hardware shop I have been to: it may be very much more recent than the arrival of the Greeks – but there aren’t many shops in Europe that are 191 years old. Beretta, the Lombardy gunmaker, was founded in the 16th century – it made cannons for the Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in ...”

“... to define. Perhaps we’re sluggish if we’re failing to make progress. If we’re slow, there may not be any progress to make. In a slow movie, we can pay attention to the scenery, the outfits, the accents and think about what’s in the corner of the frame. We can remember there used to be something called a Princess phone, even if the name doesn’t ...”

“... noir I hadn’t seen before, where the ruthless, calculating woman, in the shape of Jane Greer, may also really care for the man she is framing and using, a very young Robert Mitchum. This complexity is not going to do her any good, because both the plot and Mitchum believe in the simpler story of her murderous guile. But we are left wondering if there ...”

“... fables. One says that genius needs humiliation to get it going: so much so that the humiliation may be more important than the genius, a nicely faux-democratic message. The other says you can only make real money, money beyond dreams as distinct from just a lot of ordinary money, if you don’t care about wealth at all. Genius doesn’t calculate, even when ...”

“... slaves upsetting the empire, Christians taking over the world, great success stories, and we may suspect them of being semi-intentional allegories of the American Revolution, if only because the bad guys always have English accents. Cleopatra represents an epic ambition in its early moments. Together Caesar and Cleopatra will realise Alexander the ...”