“... just saying things as they come into one’s head. I cant catch him off his guard. But thats, it may be, because he writes so well.’ Reading Virginia Woolf’s own letters from the period 1932-35 gives much the same impression. It is as if the very freedom and fluency with which she writes allow her to evade intimacy, to protect herself from deeper and ...”

“... were to ask how he came by such detail, one possible answer is that he made it up. As this episode may suggest, the author of this book is the omniscient narrator personified, a participant-observer in every drama. Thus when the young Raymond, a lad of 11 or 12, rushes out onto the hills, Fred lumbers after him, noting the way the bracken bends and breaks ...”

“... cropping and composition – did not attract the criticism meted out to Sickert and others, but may have done as much to seed the lessons of modern art in Britain.These early influences are apparent in Sickert’s music-hall interiors of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Whistler is there in the control of low tones: the effects of artificial light in near ...”

“... as being ‘as big as a pigeon’s egg’, something else which like the banana I had never seen.3 May. A distressing call today from Dr C., the oncologist who looked after my friend Anne during her last illness. He talks about hospital services being deliberately run down and the difficulties of ward care due to shortage of staff but it’s only gradually I ...”

“... you abandoned; this will perpetuate a sense of belonging in absence without being threatening; it may even allow you to become the centre of a small community of your own; suitable candidates for this role would be an admiring younger brother, or a young and loving wife whose humble social background and limited education guarantee that she will always be ...”

“... best by anyone, ever’. Amis, Simenon and Freud all had controlling, interfering mothers, which may or may not be relevant. Freud always lived a high-low life: dukes and duchesses and royalty and posh girlfriends on one hand, gangsters and bookies on the other. The middle classes were generally scorned or ignored. He also ...”

“... after taking the overdose: I am ready for death though I fear it. Of course the whole thing may not work and I shall wake up. I don’t really mind either way. Once the decision seems inevitable the courage needed was less than I thought. I don’t quite believe anything has happened though the bottle is empty. At the moment I feel very much ...”

“... Witnessing the giving of offence, like being part of the audience for someone else’s humour, may have its enjoyment, but, tellingly, the real champions of comic abuse don’t much care for this secondary role, and this points to another dimension of the pleasure involved: it’s a way of performing, attracting attention, showing off, a form of the will ...”

“... government people … I met the top people, and the relationship was extraordinary.’ Though it may seem a tiny slip, one notices the distinction between top-level people and the top people in government. Oligarchs and generals come first and rank highest in Trump’s estimation; top government people are worth knowing, but secondary. Trump likes the ...”

“... adventures. Hollinghurst extended his range abroad, with much of the book set in Belgium, and may even have taken Baker’s reference to overemphasis on sex as a challenge, in his description of the climactic erotic encounter, when the narrator at last has his way with Luc, a 17-year-old he has been employed to tutor. It’s Luc who finally initiates the ...”

“... attack on the vehicles carrying World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, which killed seven, may plausibly be called an error. Yet it’s hard to believe that the killing of so many aid workers is the result of a series of regrettable mistakes, any more than that of medical staff – 1054 killed according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health – or journalists ...”

“... Revisiting​ old haunts is a hazardous pastime. The beloved buildings may look smaller or shabbier, the unforgettable view is ruined by the new solar farm, the once fascinating characters in the novel have lost their power to enchant, everything seems blurred or – the verdict from which there is no appeal – dated ...”

“... portrait of Phaedra was ‘free from grosser traits; and if that is so, her infatuation may have been excused as the consequence of her husband’s desertion, who had abandoned her to assist his friend in a hopeless expedition.’ Sophocles’ Cretan women can be ‘excused’, are not ‘gross’. So what is or was it about Euripides that made ...”

“... agitate for unification, Wales explores its relationship with England, Labour faces a split that may lead some of the party to an explicit embrace of extra-parliamentary politics, and Farage stirs the pot, the situation is unlikely to resolve itself any time soon. This has the makings of a full-blown constitutional crisis that the Conservative Party, no ...”

“... other Palestinian refugees that they would somehow ‘return’. However unrealistic this pledge may have appeared through the long decades spent in the refugee camps, it remained the focus of their lives and the purpose of their suffering. Driven by this pledge, thousands of young fighters were to die in Jordan in 1970 and in Lebanon between 1975 and ...”