“... varied as between Russia and Germany, on the one hand, and France, on the other. For, of the major movements which developed thereafter in those countries, French Surrealism was formally retrograde, looking back to Symbolism and beyond; German Neue Sachlichkeit set out in effect to stabilise the Modern Movement, using its formal devices for more ...”

“... free to oppose the Government’s devolution schemes for Wales and Scotland. This was the one major policy rebellion of Kinnock’s career. Leading the ‘No’ campaign in Wales, he put at risk many important friendships, particularly in the unions; but his sense of public opinion was vindicated when the referendum in Wales went 4-1 against an ...”

“... was established in 1860, Thackeray broke with Punch in 1851 (by which time he had written two major novels), and wrote only occasionally until 1854, when he ceased contributing altogether. There are too many of these mistakes of elementary detail for a work of reference. All of which is a pity, since this volume and the series generally is intelligently ...”

“... lightly masked by an insistence on the ‘difficulty’ of political and cultural judgment. The major casualty of this insistence is Williams’s prose. What may indeed be complexity in the phenomena often comes out in this prose merely as a portentous haze. But when the haze is penetrated, some things remain exceedingly simple. What Williams trusts in is ...”

“... murderous suspects. That policy might be callously wrong, and the Police Department overdue for major overhaul (as Bradley’s Christopher Commission had asserted when it reported in July 1991). But the jurors were pronouncing on individual guilt, not city governance. Koon had offered a Nuremberg defence: he was merely following standard operating ...”

“... technology: not for them slips of paper. B. Dalton was fully computerised by 1966 – the first major bookseller in the country to be so. Electronics had not merely revolutionised retail selling but had also rationalised wholesale distribution – traditionally ramshackle and inefficient in the book trade. Until the 1960s (the all-change decade for the ...”

“... markets can measure and therefore like, and uncertainty, which they can’t and therefore hate.) A major contributor to this sense of unchartedness was the decision by the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s to downgrade US government debt from AAA to AA+ status. This might seem like a small technical point, and it’s worth noting that the downgrade had no ...”

“... wants to publish a poem, he files it to the Press Association. Every government department, every major corporation, every police service and health trust and education authority delivers its official announcements to the Press Association. It is the primary conveyor belt along which information reaches national media in Britain. The boffins in Cardiff found ...”

“... form’ from an interesting angle. How do novels use, and make us accept, differences between major and minor characters? How do narratives make their protagonists complex and credible while also creating supporting characters who lack ‘interiority’? At the heart of the book is an argument about how the apparent singularity of some of fiction’s most ...”

“... on the results of this disastrous shift in taxation, Wang Chaohua merely observes that ‘major social consequences . . . are still unfolding.’ This is putting it too mildly; as Wang Hui observes, liberals react ‘with the greatest alarm’ to any criticism of what was effectively an IMF-type reform. To be fair to Hu Angang, he has focused ...”

“... specific projects, this money – £2 billion a year – comes without strings. This is seen as a major strength of the UK research system, making it more robust and flexible. Core funding helps top up grants, which by design do not cover a project’s full costs, and contributes to big-ticket items such as buildings and fellowship programmes. It also helps ...”

“... into terrible atrocities. My Lai happened because officers failed.’ Another Marine, Captain John McNamara, wrote home in 1967 that he was appalled by the loose talk he heard among his fellow officers about the need to employ terrorist tactics against terrorists: ‘Just a few years ago it was confined to the fringe. If the actual [US ...”

“... quagga. This curious form of action at a distance was given a name (telegony) and even inspired a major programme of experimental breeding. As a ‘fact’ it was comfortably embedded in most of the genetic theories of the time (including Darwin’s own) and was only rejected when August Weismann made it impossible in theory – the theory he erected on the ...”

“... posthumous miracles had begun to be attributed to him, and he was officially canonised by Pope John XXII in 1320. The story, in outline, runs thus. On the morning of (probably) 26 November 1290, Cragh and Trahaearn ap Hywel, a fellow rebel, were led out from their prison in the de Briouze castle of Swansea to the place of execution, on rising ground ...”

“... that British new music – equally suspicious of European modernism and anything American, whether John Cage or Janis Joplin – wasn’t a club worth joining. Although he had no desire to take up 12-tone composition techniques, Arnold Schoenberg’s music appealed to him intellectually and he engaged with it seriously – in noticeable contrast to Vaughan ...”