“... it. The Modern American Novel is an ‘Opus Book’ (General Editors – Keith Thomas, Alan Ryan, Peter Medawar) intended for students. The Literature of the United States is a volume in the Macmillan History of Literature. But no Oxford undergraduate could get by with generalities like this aperçu of Professor Walker’s: ‘Jewish novels are ...”

“... dedicated to Milgram: empowerment … taking responsibility), as well as being the source for a Peter Gabriel song entitled ‘We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)’. A French punk rock group called Milgram put out a CD called Vierhundertfünfzig Volt (‘450 Volts’). A British band called Midget issued The Milgram Experiment. Plays have been written ...”

“... except for an outdoor class of boys learning the Koran by rote, and nothing on sale that could be read. Basir’s concerns were for the illiterate commanders’ future employment prospects, but what about the consequences of ignorance in their present jobs? It is said that while measuring out his days under UN protection in a compound in Kabul, Muhammad ...”

“... manager goes to a restaurant with the star’s agent, Ari Gold. The manager is called E. E: He has read Medellin and he wants to do that. Ari: Where d’you get that one, huh – Josh Weinstein? E: A little insecure, Ari, eh? Ari: How d’you get it? E: Turtle found it on the subway. What’s it matter? We wanna do it. Ari: Yeah, and I want to fuck ...”

“... New Testament, beaming from a candle on a candle-stick round whose column cluster St Paul and St Peter, and whose base is supported by the symbols of the Evangelists. Groping their purblind way from the light, their backs turned to it, towards a pit, is a group of scholars and dignitaries, chiefly churchmen, headed by the Pope. Aristotle, the ...”

“... well-made plays, packed with schematic clichés and mechanical ironies. Of course, we could always read the thematic material as camouflage, as literary garnish to what’s essentially just a thumping good read. But that would be a little unfair to Boyd – especially when his new novel, Any Human Heart, struggles earnestly ...”

“... of its publication at the time, because surely I would have loved it then as I love it now: I have read few books of such wide and delightful appeal. There is a rare wholeness about The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. You get the entire man, in a way that isn’t usually within the gift of literature to procure. It is ‘the book of’ in the prosaic sense that ...”

“... places. The sequences featuring three eventually famous friends, James Prior of Northern Ireland, Peter May of England, one of its cricket captains, and William Rees-Mogg, late of the Times, are among the tightest and funniest things he has written. May is present, while utterly silent, as a batsman of genius, and as a figure of fun and a pillar of rectitude ...”

“... her recollection of works by Marco Evaristti, Cornelia Parker, Vito Acconci (this is a book to be read with Wikipedia open beside you); it has a list of artworks at the back – a glossary of the mental museum Frankie carries around. ‘Now that I am no longer a student of any kind,’ she tells us, ‘I must take responsibility for the furniture inside my ...”

“... During his summation at the Old Bailey trial of Peter Sutcliffe, Mr Justice Boreham felt called upon to remind the jury that they were there to judge Sutcliffe, not the flock of psychiatrists called to testify as to his mental condition. The jury could have been forgiven for believing that psychiatry, not Sutcliffe, was in the dock, for during the trial, the profession and its discourse were subjected to merciless inquisition ...”

“... was the life and soul of the party, observant of every detail. Food was bought on the way ... Peter Pears and Britten would often give her [Princess Mary] a small, private recital, just half a dozen Schubert songs that were then in their repertory – not too taxing for anybody. Still, there is inevitably some matter in the book, and until Donald ...”

“... of sirens.’ Sebald, Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of East Anglia, had read that the skull of Sir Thomas Browne, antiquary, lover of mysteries, connoisseur of odds and ends, was kept in the museum of that same hospital. He failed to find it, or the museum, and it turned out that the skull had subsequently been buried with the rest ...”

“... Walcott’s extravagance of poetic diction and tendency to verbosity off-putting in the past’ (Peter Porter); ‘I feel that the fuss and the language are not quite justified by the donné’ (Roy Fuller). Derek Walcott has suffered, perhaps more than any other contemporary poet writing in English, from accusations that his work is too showy. Some of the ...”

“... surface. An enormous dried sunflower is attached, inverted, in the centre of the canvas. Peter Schjeldahl saw an ‘energetic contradiction of the frontal and the recessive’ in these works, which he compares to the paintings of Jackson Pollock. He refers to the sense of being caught between diving into the image, drawn into the perspectival ...”

“... German: after some years I received a cheque for about £4.) I was surprised, a few days ago, to read somewhere a description of myself as ‘a heavily subsidised author’. Don’t almost all authors subsidise their writing by doing other jobs? Actually (and I don’t care if it sounds like boasting), I no longer have to subsidise my writing, which does ...”