“... for the Barbarians, to the desire for ultimate anonymity and inscrutability in Life & Times of Michael K, or Mrs Curran’s abject retraction of her past in Age of Iron, or the haughty refusal to confess to the politically correct commission of inquiry into sexual harassment in Disgrace: ‘What goes on in my mind is my business, not yours.’ Coetzee has ...”

“... shared a building with National Lampoon. Kincaid struck up a conversation with one of its writers, Michael O’Donoghue, who suggested she meet his friend George Trow, a staff writer at the New Yorker. Trow organised a lunch with Kincaid and William Shawn, then editor of the New Yorker, at the Algonquin. Kincaid ordered the most expensive item on the menu ...”

“... women wore the distinctive headscarves of the Muslim Hui of Ningxia and Gansu. On the kang was the wood-burning grill for the kebabs, to be accompanied by bottles of Xinjiang beer. The conversation revolved round the success of the recent date harvest. The atmosphere recalled the communes or state farms of the 1950s, an impression that was reinforced at five ...”

“... angel carrying a lamb. The horde of model tortoises collected by Eleanor, his hostess, made from wood and glass and brass and steel and bean-bags, tortoises with zips and tortoise jelly-moulds. The complete titles of many books about how to build your own cabin which he finds in a cabin west of Winnipeg. The seemingly exhaustive transcript of the ...”

“... McCluskie remains in prison. It is customary to think of long sentences and long stretches as Michael Howard’s contribution to British penal policy, but he is merely the latest in a long, if occasionally interrupted, line of social conservatives with a particular interest in correction. When, in October 1993, he announced to the Conservative Party ...”

“... War, the last and by far the worst ending with a nightmarish experience of panic and gas in Mametz Wood, on the Somme, which left him unfit for further front-line service. In proportion as the Army’s hold on him weakened, his critical interest in its mentality and methods increased. He began to write about training and tactics and at once was noted for the ...”

“... authenticity of the style. Take ‘Idylls of the King’ from Tenebrae: The pigeon purrs in the wood; the wood has gone; dark leaves that flick to silver in the gust, and the marsh-orchids and the heron’s nest, goldgrimy shafts and pillars of the sun. Weightless magnificence upholds the past. Cement recesses smell of ...”

“... pallid discipline. His is a rich and stimulating book, and we are all in the debt of Christopher Wood and Zone Books. I cannot say the same for the rather inaccurately named Language of Art History, which is merely an anthology of philosophical writings on art, together with an example, certainly admirable, by Richard Schiff of what ...”

“... out money, every day he chartered a different sleigh, he took the edge off winter, he distributed wood and coal, bread and herrings, tea and lard, he bought Madeira for the sick, and in short he warmed the world like a hundred summers. When he went away, he left a lot of happy people behind, but he didn’t look as fresh as he had when he arrived: he was ...”

“... story: When Did We Go to Morocco? or It Can’t Be True or Haven’t We Met? Of It Can’t Be True Michael Auping says: ‘It is echo-like in its composition. It is composed of a series of tilting frames jostling each other for position within the whole. The eye is teased back to a bright yellow frame in the centre of the painting and stopped short by a series ...”

“... There is also one Michael Agnolo from Caravaggio who is doing marvellous things in Rome ... He thinks little of the works of other masters ... All works of art he believes to be ‘Bagatelli’, child’s play, whoever by, and whatever of, unless they are made from life, and that there is no better course than to follow Nature ...”

“... the baker’s wife, Rosina Zoft, allows Katharina to use her bread oven from time to time; Michael Stahl, who owns a shed, lets her store her grain there; when she needs fresh milk, neighbours supply it. She, in turn, dispenses homemade herbal remedies, lends money and makes gifts of food and wine. Resentments arise when too little or too much is ...”

“... were, inspiringly, within a few hundred feet of Hard-wick Hall; later, he convalesced at Hare-wood House. Stirling claimed that it was lying in bed under the Adam ceiling in the great Gallery that he determined on a career in architecture. Immediately after the war, he entered the Liverpool School of Architecture. The recently demobilised students were ...”

“... was something like Manager of Decommissioned Underground Material and I had gone to see him with Michael Morris, one of the directors of Artangel, a company that puts on art events in different media in unusual places. He was trying to get permission to use the runnels and platforms for The Vertical Line, a performance piece devised by John Berger. In Ways ...”

“... he found her bed was made out of an ancient iconostasis, ‘hardly suitable for a piece of holy wood but perhaps all right for a crowned and anointed queen’. One of his best chapters is the account of his visit to Thailand as the guest of Prince Chula, who had been a Cambridge undergraduate when Runciman was a young don at Trinity. At a ball in Bangkok a ...”