“... Spanish friend Lucius Cornelius Balbus put up a theatre and a shopping portico in 19 bc: the still young branch of the Museo Nazionale that now occupies the site is unique in devoting most of its attention to the early medieval development of Rome, when the grandeur of Balbus’ days was long gone. Because it tries to musealise generations of Roman history ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... justify all of Naipaul’s intensities and obsessions. These eight pieces – a long one on the Michael X murders in Trinidad, five on Argentina and Uruguay, one on the Congo and one on Joseph Conrad – are held together by Conradian preoccupations. They represent an ‘effort of thought and sympathy’, an effort that ‘does not stop with the aspect of ...”

“... wrong with it. After all, an institution which manages to upset Mr Tony Benn, Lady Falkender, Mr Michael Meacher, Mr Joe Haines, the editor of the Spectator and the sub-editors of the Daily Express cannot be all bad; and from there it is a small step to conclude that it must be all, or nearly all, good. The step is a dangerous one, however, and readers of ...”

“... Tigrinya] and did not speak more Arabic than I do, but had with him an interpreter named Michael’. The second critic was ‘Dofter Esther’, an elderly cleric, who observed that the traveller ‘did not speak the Tigr language nor much Amharic’. Bredin also follows Bruce in claiming that he was appointed commander of the royal ...”

“... Because the man himself is so ungainly, it is easy to overlook Michael Moore’s voice. Where his body seems ungovernable and a source of embarrassment to him – he often can’t bear to watch himself on screen – his voice is confident, almost suave. There’s a moment in his least known movie, The Big One (1997), where he launches effortlessly into a gravelly imitation of Dylan singing ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ before reverting, with a chuckle, to his own spoken voice ...”

“... dominant ‘quality’ Sunday paper, certainly in its cultural and political influence among the young if not always in terms of its circulation. It belonged to the era of what Lewis calls the ‘benign monopolies of English life’ – the BBC, the NHS, Penguin paperbacks – as yet unconcerned about ‘low-grade competition from upstart rivals’. The ...”

“... When his book ‘This Blessed Plot’ came out in 1998, Hugo Young said that it was ‘the story of fifty years in which Britain struggled to reconcile the past she could not forget with the future she could not avoid’. Ian Gilmour reviewed the book in the ‘LRB’ of 10 December 1998. What he says seems apposite ...”

“... journalist J.W. Lambert was certainly thorough and honest, but for the later period, together with Michael Ratcliffe, who finished the book after Lambert’s death, tactful to a fault. The joint product is a useful piece of publishing history that is often rather hard going, for the story of the Bodley Head is only intermittently interesting. It opens ...”

“... the fetching. More engaging is a visit to the village of Middleton, and to the poet and critic Michael Hamburger, whose dreams and memories might have been created expressly for this book. ‘Why it was that on my first visit to Michael’s house I instantly felt as if I lived or had once lived there, in every respect ...”

“... after the war of the altogether different Labour regime personified by Bob Mellish, then a young employee of the dockworkers’ union. Mellish was to rule this dockland constituency throughout the entire post – war period, fashioning his peculiar political style out of a ruthless control overlaid by a chirpy populism exquisitely tailored to the ...”

“... When a young man who has thrust himself to the centre of the political stage writes a book on politics, he will suffer the condescension of his seniors, the condemnation of his critics, and the faint sniggers of academics offstage. David Owen has had his prescription for Britain patronised by Grimond and Powell, dissected by Ken Coates, and treated like a first-year undergraduate’s essay by Professor Peter Townsend ...”

“... thought, had died by his own hand in poverty and despair, neglected by the metropolitan world. Michael Suarez’s account here shows that Chatterton’s relations with the book trade after he arrived in London were far busier and more profitable than is commonly supposed. In the early summer of 1770 he was networking at Tom’s and the ...”

“... to be defended. One thing is certain: the family is the norm. In Cohabitation without Marriage Michael Freeman and Christina Lyon argue that the law constantly assimilates non-marriage to marriage, the setting up of a ‘free’ non-marital household to the establishment of a regular legitimate family. The consequence is a tendency to impose on ...”