“... of any kind. What men are habitually, women are only exceptionally ... No nervous or feeble young man need, therefore, be deterred from marriage by an exaggerated notion of the duties required from him. The married woman has no wish to be treated on the footing of a mistress. Far from denying the female capacity for lust, as it is so often cited as ...”

“... only consolation was that he had made contacts among the youthful aristocracy, especially with the young Lord Westport, who could take him on free holidays. A visit to Ireland, in this company, produced an early example of a historically-informed, slightly perverse sentence: ‘As to the rebellion [of 1798] in Ireland, the English I think use the ...”

“... my friends, I mean my close friends. Then he made matters worse by saying he had had a talk with Michael (Heseltine). ‘He is formidable.’ ‘He’, pause, ‘is’, pause, ‘formidable’. I got him back to the station at four thirty, smelling powerfully of brandy. Seeing I was a bit dejected, Bruce said he would plug me with John Major and David (...”

“... traditional categories of political analysis: no wonder the authors of one 1976 study quoted by Michael Gallagher in this valuable book described Ireland as a ‘persistent deviant case’: i.e. they could not understand it. A few concrete examples from recent events may help to confuse the issue even further. Item: a government whose leader is pledged to a ...”

“... About ten years ago I went to see Michael Frayn’s Noises Off in the West End. The play has been revived, and rewritten, many times since its first run in 1982 and its place in the farcical canon is undisputed. One consequence of its (entirely deserved) reputation for being hilarious is that audiences strongly expect it to make them laugh ...”

“... to the artists about whom he wrote: Blake, Poussin, Borromini. In this account, Blake is the young man’s artist. Carter makes no comment on this: her book provides a limited account of Blunt’s work as an art historian. But she does make it quite clear that Blunt was attracted by Poussin long before he took an interest in Blake. His most significant ...”

“... reflection of Victorian society. It has the same plot as David Copperfield. When it starts, young Francis Conway is the child of a pretty young mother and an ineffective but still employed father. However, Dad immediately loses his job and commits suicide rather than descend from the suburbs to the tower-blocks of the ...”

“... books returned to the shelves). Beddoes would have been relieved to know that Judith Higgens and Michael Bradshaw have included none of The Improvisatore in their new and revised selection of his poetry. From The Brides’ Tragedy we get only highlights, but enough to see Beddoes’s developing skill as a poet. The intensity of his imagery and the often ...”

“... simple remedies and evangelical tone. But her confident certainties are echoed on the other side: Michael Foot condemns her for praising Victorian values ‘without even a passing comprehension of the human suffering and indignity which the mass of our people had to endure in that pre-democratic age’. The term ‘Victorian’ is used purely descriptively in ...”

“... a classroom text in Ireland and abroad, is explicitly about the Belfast of the Troubles. Its hero, Michael, is a failed poet turned Belfast hotel manager. One day he decides he will finally tell his wife that he is leaving her. But that evening the IRA take them both captive and compel him to drive a bomb into his hotel car park to assassinate an Ian Paisley ...”

“... Kallman in tow) pressed his suit on whatever composers he could. Henze accepted it (Elegy for Young Lovers, The Bassarids); Tippett and Harrison Birtwistle resisted. The latter has worked fruitfully (the small-scale pieces Bow Down and Yan Tan Tethera) with Tony Harrison, another poet avid for theatrical and operatic activity; and his most recent ...”

“... picture etc in the National Socialist newspapers on exhibit. The town was dominated by the type of young person who walks through the streets vaguely determined, offering the Roman salute.’ Cultural greatness in decline and the juxtaposition of Goethe with Hitler – these are the two narrative axes along which ...”

“... Michael Kelly has produced a vivid, responsible account of his own itinerary, as a contributor to New Republic, the Boston Globe and the New York Times, through the Gulf War: from Baghdad to Amman; on to Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Saudi Arabia; into Kuwait and back into Iraq, via Basra; thence to Kurdistan. There are few sops to terrible beauty, whatever Kelly’s dust-jacket champions may say, and no excessive enthusiasm for the darker side of his material, either in the abandoned Iraqi torture chambers of Kuwait City or on the road to Basra ...”

“... Charles Baudelaire, and he was staring right at her: ‘He wanted to impress himself on me – young clay takes the print better. And the message was totally cynical. It wasn’t a “follow me” message. It was a quizzical, satirical: “You too?”’This is how Rosemary Tonks retells her ghostly visitation in The Halt during the Chase (1972), the last ...”

“... says he spends more time on soccer than in his office. God knows why, he exclaims with a grin. Two young co-ordinators, street lads who look as tough as hell, flip through the membership cards of their group and nod seriously at Ahmad’s instructions. The old pattern of local football clubs everywhere: businessmen and shopkeepers on one side, working classes ...”