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“... of meditation and martyrdom, of prayers uttered and strong beliefs confirmed. Yet round the corner in the Campo de’ Fiori, the statue of Giordano Bruno stands high above a modern centre of bar snacks, designer scarves and trendy beers, a statue reminding those who care to be reminded that modernity has its martyrs too. My paternal grandmother ran a ...”

“... limited success did nothing to prevent ‘radio traitors’ everywhere being vilified: in France, Paul Ferdonnet and André Olbrecht, who recorded programmes in Stuttgart; in the States, ‘Tokyo Rose’, Mildred Gillars (‘Axis Sally’) and Ezra Pound, who was indicted for broadcasting from Italy; in Britain, John Amery and P.G. Wodehouse, who was ...”

“... your dossier has reached the Bureau there is no way of avoiding the tumbril – except one: in the corner of the office sit a pair of humble, twitchy, freedom-loving scriveners, who are quietly eating their way through one of the indictments. The offices of Number 34 Greek Street must often appear like this in the sweating imaginations of a surprisingly large ...”

“... looked at times. Not that he was a complete innocent. When I was small and we’d sit in Lyon’s Corner House he’d send me like a message pigeon to an attractive woman at another table and have me announce: ‘My daddy wants to give you a kiss.’ Looking at him, they were never offended; they were inevitably amused. So he taught me how to flirt with ...”

“... a little girl whose parents had fought the Communists in Laos was resettled with her family in St Paul, Minnesota. They didn’t like it. St Paul seemed noisy and expensive, and they worried about crime. But the little girl watched Little House on the Prairie: she knew there was a Minnesota town called Walnut Grove where ...”

“... the banyan shades Wear palm leaf drapery Under the bam Under the boo Under the bamboo tree. Paul Gauguin, ‘Self-Portrait with Glasses’ (1903) For Sweeney, Gauguin’s women represent the crudest version of the myth of island bliss. But you don’t have to look long at Gauguin’s work (a retrospective is at Tate Modern until 16 January) to realise ...”

“... Blackshift (www.foon.co.uk/blackshift). Or you could – virtually speaking – sit in a quiet corner by yourself and read the newspaper. The possibilities are endless. The web browser as we know it, with hyperlinks you can follow simply by clicking on them, drop-down menus, scroll bars and – crucially – pictures, was invented in 1992 by Marc ...”

“... of Christmas from the Cuban calendar. But in Havana, I heard the extraordinary story of what John Paul II said to Fidel Castro during his audience at the Vatican late last year. The Holy Father, standing close to the President, took the opportunity to ask him why he had cancelled Christmas. The direct approach does not necessarily guarantee a satisfactory ...”

“... the whole world; it’s this that makes of her a more divided and indeed interesting writer than Paul Binding’s new study, in its pursuit of a resolving wholeness, will allow. For she is the Optimist’s Daughter whose father died tragically in the prime of life, of leukaemia – ‘a disease that even he had never heard ...”

“... confirmed at the highest reaches of power. Public attention, however, was swiftly drawn to Paul Wolfowitz’s petulant reminder, issued on the day Baker’s appointment was announced, that Russia, France and Germany had forfeited their access to America’s $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts. ‘It’s understandable that the Bush team ...”

“... Die Zwitscher-Maschine is the title of a picture by Paul Klee, and a most beguiling picture it is: beaky, joky, reticular line-drawing on washes of demurest blue and rose, a sort of grave man’s Rowland Emmett. It makes a pleasant cover illustration for Neil Smith’s collection of propaedeutic papers on linguistics, providing a title for the book and a humorous gloss on the text, the first in a series of playful images and allusions deftly exploited by Professor Smith as he attempts to introduce his readers – defined as ‘outsiders’ and ‘beginning insiders’ – to the intricate delights and perplexities of his subject ...”

“... kingdoms, a paradise for poets who do not wish to be disturbed. Michael Viney’s documentary, The Corner of the Eye, opens with a slow sweep across this landscape, a picture of distances fringed with purple and a few tawny cows nosing through the foreground, then switches to a little white cottage in the midst of it all, and then to the face of the ...”

“... by the Commission. In this forum, each representative is expected to fight his or her own national corner. Only about half of all the Commission’s proposals also require Parliament’s approval. The remainder, including the all-important Common Agricultural Policy, which consumes 40 per cent of the EU budget, is the exclusive responsibility of the ...”

“... you. That is how you find them among the Rothkos – another magnet for contemplatives.Around the corner are Bruce Nauman’s assembled screens – a pair with talking heads, another with jumping clowns, a whole group with actors playing and replaying a domestic argument – and Paul McCarthy’s Rocky, in which, gloved ...”

“... his admirable study – his ‘other Pushkin’ is the storyteller and novelist, not the poet – Paul Debreczeny quotes Pushkin’s comments on Shakespeare’s characterisation. They go hand in hand with inconclusiveness, and show why it is that though Shakespeare had to finish the play, his characters never do. They are not completed by their dramatic ...”