“... to mention Post-Modernist, approaches. There is not a shadow of psychoanalysis to be found. Some may think that this is all to the good, but whether a political approach can do justice to such a complex and powerful story – in particular to its first segment, with its emotive abandonment and salvation of the infant twins – seems dubious. This is a ...”

“... having been a hotbed of hatred towards Jews since well before the great expulsion of 1492: ‘we may better understand the expansion of the Inquisition, and of the peculiar compound of feelings that impelled it, if we consider the case of Nazi Germany and the evolution of the movement that created it.’ Anti-semitism in both Spain and Germany is taken to be ...”

“... have to be asked repeatedly, even though there has never been, nor ever will be an answer. They may be addressed to another person, but it is just as likely that they are spoken aloud to an empty chair when no one else is present. Certain questions have to be articulated, made real and sent off pulsing into the ether. When another person is present they ...”

“... comically courtly virtue of the fact by inserting a new triplet in the Prologue: The country lip may have the velvet touch; Though she’s no lady you may think her such, (A strong imagination may do much.) Such ease is all the more remarkable because Dryden’s first efforts were ...”

“... time to worry about the future of the periwig industry, since nobody will dare to buy hair which may have been cut from plague victims. Good for Pepys, the historian; an article in the Companion volume says that Dryden and Milton left us only six lines about the plague between them. It is hard to read the diary for the years 1665 to 1667 without being ...”

“... the $8000 million superconducting supercollider lies nearer to the human genome project, but that may not save it. The atom-smasher is designed to create energy conditions not seen in the universe since a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, but before reaching 15,000 million years back in time, it must first survive until Congress retreats for the ...”

“... Mary is a constant witness to her intense irritation with Claire: Heigh ho, the Claire and the May Find something to fight about every day she wrote in her diary while Shelley was still alive. Several times in the long years after his death, she expressed in different ways her dream: ‘My idea of heaven is a world without Claire.’ But Robert Gittings ...”

“... to the Lady Chatterley trial jury about the reading-matter appropriate to wives and servants, he may have had in mind the criteria applied by a Sunday Times editor in 1949 to The Naked and the Dead. ‘No decent man could leave it lying about the house,’ the paper had exclaimed about Norman Mailer’s novel of the Pacific war, ‘or know without shame that ...”

“... Sylvia Plath, who records being mesmerised, both by Hughes as a person and by his work. On 3 May 1956 she wrote to her mother to tell her that ‘Ted has written many virile, deep banging poems,’ and in her journal, describing their first meeting, she remembered: ‘And I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then kissed me bang smash on ...”

“... unbearable to him, whereas the martyr gives up his most precious possession in the hope that good may flow from it. In Christian theology, what determines whether or not you can embrace death in this way is how you have lived. If you have failed in life to divest yourself for the sake of others, you will be trapped like William Golding’s Pincher Martin in a ...”

“... go around snatching your money. INTERVIEWER: I appreciate that, Sir Arthur. SIR ARTHUR: You may appreciate that but most people don’t. If you like your money being snatched, you must be rather an odd fish I think. Harry Thompson takes up a lot of space discussing Peter’s politics. He was claimed (ludicrously) by the Liberal Party, and at different ...”

“... in the winter’s midnight; a voice that had consecrated songs to liberty and truth. Wordsworth may still have been thriving, not least thanks to the Lowthers, who a few years earlier had set him up as distributor of stamps for Westmorland (not a sinecure; there was work involved), but to Shelley he was dead, and should be mourned: ‘Deserting these, thou ...”

“... state. If the Jews managed to escape Europe, where should they go? Not to the US: Mrs Roosevelt may have been moved by We Will Never Die, but the policy of her husband’s administration remained the same. It harried the British about Palestine, wept crocodile tears over the war in Europe, and made sure that as few Jews as possible found refuge on American ...”

“... Wheeldon and Kyle Abraham, alongside classic ballets by Kenneth MacMillan and Frederick Ashton. In May and June, ahead of the full reopening, the company streamed an online programme featuring choreographers closely associated with the Royal Ballet. One name was conspicuous by its absence: Liam Scarlett, the former Royal Ballet artist-in-residence. In March ...”

“... the woman in the tight pinstriped suit waiting at the bottom of the ramp in the third book, who may or may not be the same ‘luscious lady’ with ‘shapely legs’ and a ‘short, snugly fitting blue pinstriped suit’ who mysteriously pays his bus fare in the first one. There’s also the bus conductress he will have ...”