“... and whimsical at the same time.’ Patrick is the damaged, scornful victim of his father, David Melrose, ‘descended from Charles II through a prostitute’. Centuries of damp arrest have created the monstrous David: ‘The expression that men feel entitled to wear when they stare out of a cold English drawing-room ...”

“... was, among other things, a continuation of the dialogues with Bloch by other and very different means (including some derived from Bloch’s ‘own’ Thomas Münzer). It was provocative in exactly the same sense, and sure enough its publication by Aufbau Verlag in 1952 made it a cause célèbre. Old emnities from the Expressionism debate were ...”

“... the scenes in which she takes part: in that sense, what she sees tends to be atypical. It is by no means an irrelevant factor that, in so far as her personality emerges from the notes, she seems friendly but shrewd, always prepared to like people and to enjoy herself but not to the detriment of her alertness. Although she hasn’t come looking for bad ...”

“... his latest book, like some of its predecessors, is as odd as it is learned. It begins, but by no means ends, with a minute enquiry into the expression in medias res. Horace observed that Homer, instead of starting his poem about the Trojan War from the beginning – ab ovo, Leda’s egg from which was hatched Helen of Troy – chose to rush his listeners ...”

“... that far too many Americans carry, and which is a symptom of the same faith in violence as a means of social control. Few white Americans remember their names, but few black Americans – and no black parents with sons – have forgotten them: Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old in Florida killed by a ‘neighbourhood watch volunteer’ who claimed to be ...”

“... as individuals. Their attributes, too, share this expressive register, rendered with minimal means: a characteristic hat, an umbrella, a necklace. ‘Trompe l’oeil Crucifix’ (1812) Boilly’s attention to textures and surfaces is remarkable. Fabrics crackle and shimmer. Fishbowls, telescopes and apples catch and reflect light. A bug-eyed child ...”

“... to define it in terms favourable to themselves. This isn’t a disturbing fact – it’s what it means to act politically – but it isn’t a neutral one either. Behind that wall of appealing rhetoric, there is bustling activity: something is being constructed.To point out that ‘the centre’ – as a proclaimed area of shared, sensible assumptions about ...”

“... parties. The key portfolios in the new government went to the members of Shamir’s Likud Party. David Levy, a populist of Moroccan origins, became Foreign Minister. Mr Levy does not speak English. But since little more than a dialogue of the deaf with the United States was likely on the peace process, this was not considered a severe handicap. Moshe ...”

“... as the image of time and the tale. George Mackay Brown is as firmly in control of his linguistic means as any Formalist could desire. When he draws our attention to the perilous condition of metaphor, he might almost be echoing Viktor Shklovsky’s convictions, explosively communicated in ‘The Resurrection of the Word’ (1914). Shklovsky laments: ‘The ...”

“... to City Limits as part of a strategy to get herself a job at the Guardian, then in the designer David Hillman’s font-butting, G2-adding incarnation: she loved the Guardian intimately, like a lover, the way it cropped its pictures, its Garamond and Helvetica and heavy rules. I, on the other hand, was completely clueless. Between Deborah and Nick ...”

“... Eurosceptic ministers and former ministers, such as Iain Duncan Smith, Nigel Lawson and David Owen. Then there’s Grassroots Out, which was supposed to bring the other two lots together. But the prospectus on offer has been muddied because the spokesmen within each organisation have had different ideas. Johnson in particular changes his ideas once ...”

“... true when we are trying to untangle humanity’s relationship with the natural environment,’ David Blackbourn writes, in this magnificently compelling, vivid and often pioneering book. Its subject is Germany’s struggle to subjugate its landscape, above all its waters, over the last 250 years. But its implications apply to the contemporary world, to the ...”

“... of view of the individual worker, scrambling up the ladder even as it’s being pulled away, this means that the traditional 20th-century strategies for economic advancement – education, working hard, fighting for promotion – no longer make sense. ‘The trend within white-collar work is for more lower-level service work, as in retail sales and in ...”

“... just before the birth of the state described in Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ and David Cesarani’s Major Farran’s Hat. Both books deal with the last years of the Mandate, when the rightist nationalists of the Irgun and the Stern Gang waged a fierce campaign against British forces and the Arab population, provoking an increasingly harsh and ...”

“... schooled the mujahidin warlords as well as Mullah Omar and his Taliban colleagues. Whether this means they are more radical than the previous generation is unclear. Coghlan quotes a Taliban cleric near Lashkar Gah in Helmand in March 2008 as saying: ‘These new crazy guys are really emotional. They are war-addicted.’ Recent reports suggest that most ...”