“... were fighting and dying deep inside Iraq in an effort to stop the Scuds being fired at Israel – may not be far from the truth. The facts about the human results of the war are still denied us by the generals, even if the sufferings of a few selected groups of men and women are revealed. Thus the brutality meted out to the Kuwaitis by Iraqi occupation forces ...”

“... of the circle, the Regal Cinema, High Street, Sidcup, Kent. It was either late April or early May 1945. I was not yet eight years old. Ten years later in Wuppertal, on the fringe of the Ruhr, the German boy with whose family I was staying for the summer said in response to a remark of mine about the catastrophe Hitler had been for Germany: ‘Well, at ...”

“... Just after 8 o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, 24 May 1989, a special unit of gendarmes entered the priory of Saint François at Nice in search of a certain Paul Touvier, who was living there under the name of Paul Lacroix. An arrest was made and within half an hour Touvier was on his way to Fresnes prison in Paris ...”

“... The old idols are not all they seemed and the vicarious sympathies of impassioned academics may have to be redirected from dockers and draymen to their long-suffering and long-silenced wives. When Thompson declared that it was time to rescue common people ‘from the enormous condescension of posterity’, he had in mind ‘the poor stockinger, the ...”

“... But however much a modern travel book, like the prospectus or itinerary of a travel company, may pile on the picturesqueness, the colour, the scenery, the girls, the exotic food and drink, meaninglessness of another sort than that revealed to Mrs Moore soon takes over. In his quiet way Norman Lewis is an adept at suggesting the nature of this ...”

“... was voted through by a narrow majority. That is something, but when the Bill becomes law, as it may later this month, there will be at least 8000 asylum-seekers without benefit, according to the Refugee Council; many of them will be homeless. A policy that attempts to discourage future asylum-seekers by punishing those who are already here doesn’t make ...”

“... feminised in a spinsterish way, New England at its oldest. Then this: Have there been, we may ask, any successful efforts to escape from the genteel tradition, and to express something worth expressing behind its back? ... I might mention the humorists, of whom you here in California have had your share. The humorists, however, only half escape the ...”

“... is certainly very mysterious.’ Fianna Fail was forced into setting up the tribunal in May 1991, when Desmond O’Malley, their partner in coalition, withdrew his support for a motion of confidence in the procedures then regulating the beef industry. There were two reasons O’Malley did this: one was the uproar in the Dail caused by a World in ...”

“... somehow guaranteed the novel’s quality, making Ondaatje into a kind of modern Flaubert. But it may be that Ondaatje has spent too long considering what he has written, listened to himself so often that he has occasionally lost a sense of what he is sounding like. Would Flaubert, at any rate, have written the phrase ‘turn eternal in a prayer’ or ...”

“... if its emergence must have a direct biological rationale. It might, on the contrary, odd as this may sound, be simply a by-product of traits that do have such a rationale. One of the great puzzles of evolution is why sentience seems to be the preferred method for handling adaptivity to the environment. Why not process information without any inner feeling at ...”

“... the world was well lost. Nor would all Fox’s friends have agreed that they were. ‘Mr Fox may finish his History and his friends may go to the Devil,’ growled one of them who resented the repeated failures of Parliamentary leadership. The claim that Fox achieved a profound insight into the true worth of power ...”

“... intruding into the GDR; the danger that illusions about the character of West German imperialism may increase and that its character as the main disturber of European peace may become obscured; the danger that in tactical matters a differentiation will be applied between individual socialist countries.’ The paper ...”

“... that her relation with her mother must be recovered, even if the recovery proves fatal. Helen may say that she was the love of Bett’s life, but it is quite clear that Bett is the great love of Helen’s life. This is disconcerting, even for a woman reader. We are all used to thinking of a woman obsessing over a male lover, or perhaps even over a ...”

“... Engels described the scene in the centre of Manchester on a Saturday night: ‘Intemperance may be seen in all its brutality. I have rarely come out of Manchester on such an evening without meeting numbers of people staggering and seeing others lying in the gutter.’ The habits of the citizens of Manchester are unchanged. Going out is still a high ...”

“... and wisecracks; you slap your thighs, he is suddenly vulnerably sensitive and very cultivated. May Week was in June, the last instalment of his on-off autobiography, discloses that for years he has been laboriously studying Japanese in a spirit of anything but racist superiority. The volume ends with a carpe diem in James’s hyper-sensitive mode. The ...”