“... his lack of an inside, goes not only with the ability to turn his hand to anything, poetry-wise, but with his continual casual references to wife and children, objects in his life which his poetry can rightly make nothing of, although Lowell and Berryman, in their obsessive way, made so much of them. So at least one would think. Dryden also would never ...”

“... by visitors who not only go up unduly close – and would no doubt be fingering it, braille-wise, as they used to be able to, if it weren’t cordoned off – but stay there for longer than they should, determined perhaps to make a standing start on a long since redundant decipherment. Their attention has been held, as must that of the French Army ...”

“... told Lady Randolph, ‘that in view of the enquiry which has been promised ... it would be wise on Winston’s part to leave England at this moment ... An attempt might be made to misrepresent his action.’ Lansdowne’s warning was justified. In the enquiry report published soon afterwards the conduct of Winston and his brother officers was ...”

“... then again the second time, in the same place, with the same ultimate result … I thought I was wise, just because I’d written so many books; I thought I knew what made people tick; I even thought of myself as an advice centre. But I had treated Stephen and Jean as if they were characters in one of my novels.They are characters in one of his novels, but ...”

“... In the sphere of analysis, on the other hand, a good deal remains to be said. It might have been wise, for a start, to cite the contemporary definitions of political corruption. In the Marconi debate of June 1913 Asquith produced six ‘don’ts’ for a minister. Three of these were concerned with the minister’s obligation never to put himself into a ...”

“... the implications for Whitehall should be read by every civil servant. Norton-Taylor observes that Michael Heseltine, like the rest of the Government, was stunned, and stung, by the jury’s verdict, and was determined to fight back, to have the last word, and to keep the pressure on Ponting for as long as possible. The result was that, at quite unusually ...”

“... This is a miniature dictionary of the invented English in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon’s charming, flawed and exhausting new novel: bik (Yiddish: bull) – doorman latke (Yiddish: potato cake) – 1. police cap 2. policeman noz (Yiddish: nose) – policeman shammes (Yiddish: assistant to rabbi, beadle) – policeman sholem (Yiddish: peace) – gun shoyfer (Yiddish: horn) – cell phone shtarker (Yiddish: strong man, strong arm) – gangster; hard man Yiddish, it turns out, has not said its last word: it is still involved in the business of coinages and slippages ...”

“... any nominations at this year’s Grammy Awards, Braun tweeted: ‘This time there wont be any wise words, no excuses, I just plain DISAGREE. The kid deserved it. Grammy board u blew it on this one.’ Perhaps the snub had something to do with lyrics such as: ‘Chillin’ by the fire while we eatin’ fondue/I dunno about me but I know about you.’ The ...”

“... confusion invariably inspires confusion. C.G. Jung, a mind of confused genius, was a hell-send for Michael Tippett, a veritable genius of confusion – who now, celebrating the 75th year of his consistently lively life, inspires sundry confusions in his commentators, and even in those who comment on his commentators: ‘...”

“... although Welles believed the stories of death camps circulating by late 1942, he told Rabbi Steven Wise: ‘For obvious reasons you will understand, I cannot give these [facts] to the press.’ Welles may have been silenced on the genocide out of loyalty to FDR’s priorities, Hull out of his own White House ambitions and the desire not to call attention to ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... same side as their leader. Rather than acting as a vehicle for Bevan’s views, Tribune, edited by Michael Foot, described itself as leading the campaign against the H-bomb. Lee believed that the Bevanites’ desertion was responsible for the cancer that killed Bevan in 1960: ‘until their attacks began, he never had so much as a stomach ache,’ she wrote ...”

“... but the daily rite of time and precision is still enacted. This nugget of information from Michael Young and Tom Schuller’s Life after Work* is both moving and symbolic. Greenwich was the chosen area of their enquiry into what happens to us after we stop clocking in. As one with a year or so to go, I found their survey gripping. Time, which you obey ...”

“... and the stakes were high. Vincent Hickey named his accomplices at Chapel Farm: his cousin Michael Hickey, aged 16 but already an experienced minor criminal, and Jimmy Robinson, a man in his mid-forties with a mixed career of regular work and crime whose letters from prison, quoted by Foot, show intelligence and a powerful way with words. For good ...”

“... does recall in this context Heraclitus’ wonderfully cryptic ‘One thing, the only truly wise, does not and does consent to be called by the name of Zeus.’ These old men – they appear in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon – think of justice as some sort of ultimate moral balance. But when other characters in the same play speak of justice they generally ...”