“... plain they are, the poem never loses its mesmeric wet grip, its impact of saturation. This is the more interesting since Hughes’s language has often in previous collections given the impression of a weight-lifter hurling steel girders and plastic laths around with an equally ferocious virtuosity. Now, down on the farm, it seems exactly equal to the task ...”

“... Berlin, where he found the sight of ‘yellow-marked benches for the Jews in the Tiergarten . . . more sickening than any newspaper article could have made it’. What Grisewood saw in Berlin, and no doubt reported to Jones, doesn’t appear to have substantially altered his or Jones’s politics. In an anti-war essay dated 11 May 1939 and intended for the ...”

“... you get one.Cuthler’s scandalous grief was recorded in a booklet of about fifty pages, among more than a thousand other parish reports from the diocese of Hereford in 1397. These were the results of an inquiry called a visitation, whereby church authorities attempted to discern the state of religious life in the parishes. Local worthies sent reports to ...”

“... visceral reaction many people have against it, in spite of its being much less destructive than more traditional forms of military violence. Drones, or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), are more selective in the killing of enemies, produce less collateral damage to non-combatants and impose no physical risk to those who ...”

“... of power. The ways in which reality is tweaked in Enigma (1995), Harris’s second novel, are more modest. As in Fatherland, the Germans have somehow ascertained that the British are able to decipher the codes produced by their Enigma machines. The man recalled to Bletchley Park to enable the British to regain the upper hand in the cryptographic struggle ...”

“... tainted by liberation theology. Gerardi told the local army chief that the soldiers were killing more people than the guerrillas were, and that the military’s lawless actions were recruiting civilians to the guerrillas’ cause. One night in July 1980 the bishop was smuggled out of a village along a mountain path to avoid an army ambush that had been set ...”

“... to a genuine reassessment of Mary’s Church remain. The greatest of these is the burning of more than 280 Protestant men, women and teenagers between February 1555 and November 1558. This was the most intense religious persecution anywhere in 16th-century Europe, and has seemed to most historians conclusive evidence of the Marian regime’s ...”

“... a hasty scribble on a verso may be as significant as the fancy drawing on the recto – possibly more so. In the ‘labyrinthine’ (his word) Soane archive a capacity for taking pains is a sine qua non of worthwhile research and it has resulted in a worthwhile exposition of a small corner of architectural history. Small but significant, not only in respect ...”

“... and divorce. That sort of thing. Then there are the things we think about every day. It’s much more likely that we’re going to come up with TV-movie-of-the-week responses about the big things because we haven’t had practice with them. I write about the little things because we’ve usually come to some interesting conclusions about them, we’ve ...”

“... galley, the truly superior beings should strive to be masters, not slaves: ‘Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but proficiency.’ A stronger type of human being would tear off the veil of hypocrisy, otherwise known as reason and moral virtue, do away with guilt, celebrate instinct, preach violence and follow the call of ...”

“... to run over all he had in him and to share it with everyone he could get to listen. As it became more and more likely that he would die, he began writing Too close to the bone – this must have been in March 1988. A few weeks later Jacqueline Rose and I went away with Jen White and Allon to spend a night in Wells and to ...”

“... other novelists meditating on that inscrutable question, she comes up with answers that reveal more about her own convictions and aspirations than they do about the possible conditions of prehistory. The Temple of My Familiar is founded on an ancient utopia. Lissie recalls an immeasurably distant past when men and women lived apart, coming together only ...”

“... a company of Blunderers and Blockheads, and that there is a Commentator in the World, one Dr. B, more Learned, Accurate, Ingenious, Judicious and Illustrious than all of them put together. This representation of Bentley as a figure of overweening arrogance was one which I, like most students of English literature, was primed to accept. In The Dunciad in ...”

“... memoirs and mostly familiar to historians. Old friends include George Robertson, Joseph Mitchell, Thomas Somerville and Ramsay of Ochtertyre. The accounts are separated into themes, such as school, factory and mine, leisure, crime (though none of the memorialists claim active participation in this). The excerpts are long enough to carry the style and emphasis ...”

“... the 1590s, some of them very distinguished, and of their efforts to exclude one who would become more distinguished than any of them. Blackfriars is an area rich in Shakespearean associations, invisible but well attested. Down an alleyway running south off Carter Lane lies New Bell Yard. Now dominated by the glass-fronted atrium of the Grange St Paul’s ...”