“... pregnant opening – ‘12 June. I’ve never known such a summer. A sultry heatwave since mid-May. All day a thick cloud of dust hangs unmoving over streets and market-places’ – reminds me irresistibly of another great beginning: ‘Ganz Europa leidet gegenwärtig unter dieser Hitze’ (‘All Europe is currently suffering in this heatwave’), from ...”

“... and firm that they looked artificial’, Valérie swings both ways. Every young boy’s dream. It may be the misjudged silliness of these later sex scenes that makes the racial discourse of Platform stand out. Certainly, through various characters, Houellebecq has a go at diverse national and religious targets. Americans appear to be beneath or beyond direct ...”

“... and the names of banned writers listed (739 Jewish writers who wrote in French were included by May 1943). Some publishing houses were requisitioned (including Hachette), others were closed, while some newspaper editors were dismissed (Jean Prouvost of Paris-Soir was one). Other periodicals met with German approval and were given preferential treatment or ...”

“... the shape of new interpretations has yet to crystallise. What happened to the Soviet Union in 1991 may be characterised as a revolution – not in the sense of a spontaneous popular movement overturning the old regime (which it certainly wasn’t), but in the sense of an abrupt political, economic and ideological transformation as sweeping in its impact and ...”

“... have also fed strikingly back into the culture out of which they came. The palace’s aesthetic may well have derived directly from the artistic world of the earlier 20th century (Evans compared a fragment of Minoan painting to a piece of Morris wallpaper). But later in the century, artists, film-makers and novelists (notably Mary Renault) in their turn ...”

“... into 3 lots of 12, 4 of 9, 6 of 6 or whatever, in a tidy, manageable way. One suspects it may have been schemed up and storyboarded before it was written. Which, for better or for worse, suggests a writer who wants to win mastery of his working methods. The story has two parallel plotlines, set up to counterpoint one another in predictable and ...”

“... Her researches were deeply implicated in Modernist recoveries of the classics; and though it may be that they were substantially misread and misunderstood in the process, their richness and suggestiveness lent themselves to such creative (mis)appropriation (as the work of Mary Douglas did during the 1960s). And after the Second World War, when ...”

“... himself for weeks in the Martí library in Cuba, but readers who know nothing but this novel may wonder whether the secular saint is worthy of reverence. He can be a little buffoonish, a flirtatious sensualist making pronouncements on love (‘Love is a wild beast that needs to be fed anew every day’), always ready to wow the señoritas with a new line ...”

“... a Mutual Suicide Association, by the regulations whereof any member being weary of life, may call at any time upon another to cut his throat for him. It is all of course to be done very quietly without weeping or gnashing of teeth. I, for instance, am to go in and say, ‘I say, Hunt, just stop painting that head a minute, and cut my throat’; to ...”

“... which Gerrard herself provided in her previous book, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole (1994). I may be a cynic, but the passages of Aaron Hill: The Muses’ Projector that most appeal to me are those showing that Hill was not all go-getterish self-confidence, brazen Bransonism; that a streak of self-doubt was also part of his make-up; that he was prone to ...”

“... time, the government published its 2006-7 budget on the Finance Ministry website. And then in May, the government – again a first – announced how much had been received or pledged by oil companies bidding for offshore contracts. ExxonMobil is the leading producer in Angola, pumping 560,000 barrels per day. Chevron is second with 420,000 barrels and ...”

“... he likened to a novel by Balzac. That was the last film Stroheim completed as a director. He may be better known as an actor (‘the man you love to hate’, La Grande Illusion, Sunset Boulevard), but in the history of film he made more of a mark as a director. It was his accumulation of detail that earned Stroheim a place in old film histories as the ...”

“... interest rate on the bills increased from 20 per cent in the autumn of 1997 to over 40 per cent in May 1998. Wage arrears mounted in both the state and private sectors. In May 1998, social unrest erupted on a scale not seen for a decade. In 1989, the miners had gone on strike in favour of Yeltsin and the free market, which ...”

“... If she appeared to the Tory faithful as a painfully nostalgic evocation of the glory days, this may remind us that the average age of party members is currently 67. If she inspired Labour to suggest that an otherwise dull election was fraught with unsuspected ideological peril by showing us, on the hoardings, that the bald fact of Hague’s leadership ...”

“... I have known him for many years and admire both his expertise and his commitment.) Barnett may not have seen Lhasa in the 1940s or 1950s, the last decades in which the Dalai Lama’s state could be said still to exist, though already under Chinese occupation, but for that period – and earlier – his scholarship compensates for his lack of direct ...”