“... of an embryonic system of select committees – has been credited largely to Norman St John Stevas. So the diaries must remain his monument. But what a monument! If I ever meet Dick again – perhaps in some heavenly version of the Members’ Lobby – I think I could honestly assure him that those remarkable volumes are a more significant ...”

“... be both apt and marketable. Dabydeen and all other poets who sometimes use dialect might relish John Agard’s ‘Listen Mr Oxford Don’ (‘mugging de Queen’s English/is the story of my life’). This poem is intelligent and funny, yet it risks boxing itself in by marketing a stereotypical speaker who is a sort of licensed clown: Me not no Oxford don ...”

“... to national character were largely an aspect of political abuse – a view spelled out in one of John Stuart Mill’s earliest essays in the Westminster Review and defended all his life. Professor Deane is equally scrupulous about distinguishing one antipathy and its objects from another. In the early stages of the Revolution, émigré priests were made much ...”

“... addresses his girlfriend as Angel Drawers. In other words, he’s a cross between Keith Talent and John Self, a London yob whose conflict with the South American wilds is bound to produce much mirthful copy and rich scope for fatso-baiting. Stockton certainly lives up to his role, screaming for tomato ketchup in the middle of nowhere, sulking in his ...”

“... Hume correctly. As he remarks in his preface, others are onto the same interpretation, notably John Wright in his The Sceptical Realism of David Hume.) But, as I observed above, a philosopher’s actual words are seldom sufficient to deter a reading that fits contemporary orthodoxy (c.f. Wittgenstein). I would make only two criticisms of Strawson’s ...”

“... of an F15 or a smart missile. Note also that with the sudden disappearance of April Glaspie and John Kelly, the present war-making Administration has been run without a single professional who has any real knowledge or experience of the Middle East, its languages or its peoples. Such as it was, Iraq’s case against Kuwait – a case to some degree ...”

“... them being ‘This trouble at the court you catch,/That where you itch, you must not scratch’ (John Oxenford’s translation). Only one consolation remains to Tasso: whereas other men fall silent in their anguish, ‘a god gave me the gift to tell how I suffer’ – a famous formulation of what has become a truism of the trade. No doubt it would be coarse ...”

“... Chief of Staff, has claimed that she influenced the sacking of Reagan’s campaign chairman, John Sears, in 1980; Larry Speakes has argued that she kept Lynn Nofzinger from becoming Press Secretary: while Donald Regan, the former Secretary of the Treasury, has accused her of a host of similar sins, including campaigning for the resignation of William ...”

“... pounding drums to scare the furry creatures, consecrate testosterone, and push the sale of Iron John. In Revolution From Within, Campfire Girl Gloria Steinem chronicles her exasperating fall and rise and fall and rise and fall and rise in male-dominated America with the crackle of a marshmallow heaving over a flame. Miller would have loved it all and ...”

“... Gertrude Jekyll lived to see the first waves of the tide of gentility that swept over Surrey until John Betjeman could not look at one of Miss Jekyll’s beloved rhododendrons without thinking of a stockbroker. Less intellectual, in many ways less effective than Morris, she was, nevertheless, in one sense nearer the heart of the issue. In her work as a garden ...”

“... of scepticism about constructive moral argument) enjoys renewed favour among moral philosophers. John Rawls has remarked that the ideal method of moral philosophy is Socratic; and Vlastos’s account shows why a Socratic method deserves to be taken seriously and examined critically. Much of the best work on Socratic and Platonic ethics that has been done in ...”

“... definition of cinematic vision. But, although Hollander finds Hollywood epics prefigured in John Martin’s Biblical extravagances and a foretaste of the framing and editing of commercial movies in Menzel’s illustration from The Life of Frederick the Great, proto-photographic cinematic imagery is her main concern. She believes it makes quite ...”

“... grandson Matthew Yorke, and rounded off with a touching if too brief memoir by Sebastian Yorke. John Updike contributes a gracefully enthusiastic introduction. For Green, writing fiction was so demanding – partly because he could only work at it in the evenings and at weekends, and partly because he rewrote so much – that it’s not surprising that he ...”

“... as a representative extract for much longer and more elaborate babblings, such as the full text of John Berryman’s ‘Step One’, prelude to the general confession he made for Alcoholics Anonymous, wherein the sufferer relates all the harm he has done himself and others. If the day ever comes when I pin that document above my typewriter, it will be because ...”

“... last poems.) From the time he went at the age of 18 to Vanderbilt and attracted the attention of John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren it was glory all the way until he enlisted in the services a decade later. When in 1934 Allen Tate put together a poetry supplement for a magazine, it included several poets with firm reputations, but was headed by five ...”