“... liberal. That makes the conduct of Burke (and Esther) no less courageous. They had much to lose. I may appear a little unkind in stressing this. After all, the Burke whom I know in this way as a simple ethnic heritage is one Mr Freeman has painfully to learn, with all the more difficulty in that Burke often passes for white so easily. Unhappily, Mr Freeman has ...”

“... murderer, Mr Wrong, are sorted out. There’s an Incident at Owl Creek-like ending in which Mary may be executed, or reborn, or returned by time-loop to the novel’s opening situation. Other People, this is to say, does not easily give up its secret – at least not to me. Amis’s cleverness has always been of the kind which makes the clodhopping reader ...”

“... with his own image. Françoise Gilot said she couldn’t go on living with a monument, but that may have been sour grapes. No doubt he was passionately concerned with himself, but he was even more concerned with the things he made. And not with those he had made, but with whatever he happened to be working on at the time. He kept the ‘Demoiselles ...”

“... individuals, representatives of their elected and traditional authorities did not take part. In May 2021 an agreement was reached between the two countries. According to the joint declaration, Germany said it was ready to recognise its ‘moral responsibility for the colonisation of Namibia’ and to apologise ‘for the historic developments that led to ...”

“... by her father after she refused to ‘marry’ him. I went on Saint Dymphna’s feast day (30 May); a large congregation filed up to kiss a small fragment of bone in a glass case. The mood was hushed and intense; the votaries clearly in earnest and filled with hope and trust. After the ceremony, I went to the sacristy to talk to the young celebrant of the ...”

“... time trying to write a poem, the retrospective report on having written a poem – all these may be communicated to correspondents, but the actual process of composition will remain something of a black box. With the exception of ‘Little Gidding’ (or ‘Spittle-Skidding’ as Eliot whimsically termed it in a letter to Hayward), the writing of which ...”

“... her in a bag. This bag had once held my hats.’ She concludes: ‘Please keep this letter as I may want to refer to it some time for a story.’As she put it in her autobiography, drily entitled Curriculum Vitae (1992), ‘most of the memorable experiences of my life I have celebrated, or used for a background in a short story or novel.’ Usually she ...”

“... of living speech where Walcott employs a refined poetic diction. He is also, as some of this may imply, less pleasurable to read. Sun Poem is nothing if not structured. It has 12 sections, suggestive of an annual cycle, or of the hours between sunrise and dark; seven of these sections correspond to the colours of the rainbow, though in puns that have ...”

“... the bourgeoisie into buildings that house a wide range of books, among which some literature may be lurking, the public libraries must surely have made matters a little easier, if only from a logistical point of view, for those members of the middle class who are in rebellion against the philistinism endemic in their milieu. The incorrect belief that the ...”

“... applied specifically to (young) women’; and – most surprising of the entries that may variously be held to manifest sexism or a reversed sexism or the defeat of sexism – that ‘He who hesitates is lost’ in its early uses referred ‘specifically to women’. Again like any good reference book, this dictionary is ideal for family ...”

“... George recorded. Some, of course, felt the same about Clarence. His intended consort was Princess May of Teck, a royal in a million, who it was hoped would pull him together. On his premature (and extremely fortunate) demise, she married Prince George instead. The rest of his life was a succession of such fantasy worlds. Both Alexandra and her daughter ...”

“... Derrida says about language sounds pretty much like what the Philosophical Investigations said, we may conclude that in France they are just now catching up with what we learned as students. We were raised to sneer at Hegelian absolute knowledge, Marxist certainty about the direction of history, Husserlian apodicticity, Russellian logical form, positivist ...”

“... you see it,’ and one obvious sign for it is a child who goes ‘wrong’. You and your mother may not agree about good mothering, but if you didn’t turn out all that well yourself, if you are an alcoholic, or have personality problems, if you are anorexic, or a juvenile delinquent, a killer, a schizophrenic, or if you died in your cot from Sudden Infant ...”

“... constitutional revolution’: ‘“we the people” – to use a long-coined phrase that may finally become currency in Britain – have changed, especially in our relationship to authority.’ The idea of the book is unobjectionable: it asks what last May’s General Election ‘really tells us; explores the ...”

“... literature, published a biography in 1971, which appeared in English in 1972. While Woodhouse may feel, with justice, that the earlier book lacks the scholarly rigour of his own, Jullian covers much of the same terrain, relies on many of the same sources and brings to the subject an attractive enthusiasm for and knowledge of the Decadent ...”