“... so years. (It was some of the favourite reading of Charles X, the last of the Bourbon kings.) What may be reckoned bad luck, though, is for this harmless, foolish, and not un-endearing relic of a dead fashion, to have been resurrected under the auspices of the MLA, as a masterpiece of cultural criticism and a trail-blazing feminist manifesto. Mme de ...”

“... book is an examination of a fabled corporate culture. As such, its immediate historical precedent may be Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, a book with few literary merits which endures as a period piece from a time when ‘bright young men in gray flannel suits rushed around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere’. Wilson’s book, written ...”

“... protocols and internal military guidelines give much latitude to commanders on the ground. This may make the law appear feeble, sometimes to the point of vacuity, but it is also its realism. Chief among the paradoxes of the law of war is that it cannot be enforced. The moral opprobrium that has surrounded the use of poison gas is an exception that proves ...”

“... is one of the strengths of the book, but it comes and goes. When it goes, plots and characters may be blandly pressed in the service of typicality and prescription. Thus in Villette the fact that Lucy gets tired of mending Ginevra’s clothes or watching Polly being dutiful is made to bear a burden beyond its capacity when required to ‘exemplify Lucy’s ...”

“... someone’s ascribed to something and suggesting another. If others are not at home either, they may respond and the practice may change, even end. Institutions, whole nation-states, even whole empires, as with the former Soviet Union, can collapse, and can sometimes do so very suddenly. When they do, new authorities will ...”

“... to 1972ish) were irresistible. They have been the good fortune and the curse of my generation (‘May you live through interesting times’): we thank our lucky stars that our time for being young was then and not the Eighties or Nineties, but found – or find – ourselves a little slow to get on with the getting on, hypnotised as we are by the brief period ...”

“... scrupulousness in testing the sensitivity of their model to changes in its quantitative parameters may make us overlook the fact that its qualitative assumptions are hardly subjected to scrutiny at all. This is like a manufacturer claiming that his jojoba-cardamom-and-asses-yogurt rejuvenating thigh balm damages the environment less than using the ...”

“... up enough of the ‘Hound Dog’ days for those who thought themselves for ever young. He may have been banned back in the Fifties for a swivelling pelvis: he was never banned for singing anything. His first year of stardom may have been subversive, but thereafter he settled in to become one of the most ...”

“... not particularly needing anything though within reason able, if you choose, to have it. Money may be Frozen Desire, but when it thaws out Desire may emerge less lively than one had hoped. James Buchan would agree that it isn’t much use talking to economists about these money mysteries, for they will all tell you ...”

“... wore leeks in their hats for childishly naughty revels and received blessings on the lines of ‘May your P & p’ – i.e. Prick & purse – ‘never fail you.’ Offenders against the rules were punished by having their penises smeared with egg yolk and oats and then exposed to the mercy of two hungry ducks. A merchant called Robert Nettleton was awarded ...”

“... 65 years after it was created, the humour seems trite and self-consciously cute, although this may be due to the current preference for technique over subtlety. Les Masques(1933) was the first ballet to incorporate what became known as the ‘Fred Step’ (a combination of five steps which he credited to Pavlova). It became a talisman, or a trademark, and ...”

“... is overlooked: he was an indifferent student, enjoys the occasional lie-in with his wife and may have dyed his beard. If Sharrock and Devenport are right, what justification can there be for dealing with Gerry Adams? Morally, it’s repugnant; politically, it’s worthless. The peace process is premised on the belief that all sides – and above all, the ...”

“... to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be; but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled by the real proprietors of said land to do competent work for his living. And who are these ‘real proprietors’? ‘The Saxon British.’ It was ‘heroic White men’ who turned the ‘oozy ...”

“... too, and she made no attempt to disguise it. Her offensive remarks to her friend Maryat Lee may have been facetious, or she may have been playing devil’s advocate, but she was unequivocally disdainful about the integrationists from the North. When James Baldwin toured the southern states in 1957, O’Connor had the ...”

“... attractive oboe-playing husband and four attractive kids. (While we’re talking about dreams, you may feel that anyone being able to divine the identity of everyone they see is closer to a nightmare – but it’s only because it’s a nightmare and therefore illegal in most countries that it doesn’t happen already. In Russia anyone can use Yandex’s ...”