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“... an achievement of high culture – almost an inverted mandarinism. The humble style has a grand history: to match it with great subjects calls for virtuosity, which is why it cost Orwell such time and effort to learn how it was done, and also why he was keen to distinguish it from pulp prose, which he regarded as an instrument for the oppression of ...”

“... second book; I don’t know the first, The Notebook of Gismondo Cavaletti, but it won the David Higham Prize and is described in a Nina Bawden review quoted on the flap of the new one as ‘confident’. In the Dark has all the marks of a brave but not altogether confident search for something different to say. Few novels have been written about ...”

“... aware of her part in the genesis of the entertainment, allowed herself to accept tickets for the Grand Concert Dramatique donné par M. Hector Berlioz where the Fantastique (‘Episode de la vie d’un artiste’) was to be followed by the premiere of Lélio (‘Le Retourà la vie’). It was a stage box which had been reserved, so that she found herself ...”

“... relatively minor aunt sallies of whom not all readers will have heard, such as a certain Professor David Harlan. But behind these front men lurk the high-priestly figures, whom Elton hints will prove no less evanescent: Foucault, Barthes and M. Jacques Derrida, who is expected to share Sir Geoffrey’s company when honorary degrees are conferred in Cambridge ...”

“... finance the Emperor’s return to France, had established a vast clientele of kings, princes and grand-dukes, stretching across Europe and beyond. Worth dressed the Princess von Metternich, Poole the Prince, and so on. Both soon acquired a new clientele in the American plutocracy. Parisian opinion noted that English tailoring had superseded French as early ...”

“... building and enough fine spices (especially cinnamon) to kill a horse. But when she refrains from Grand Statements, Stainer can be very good. ‘The Dice Players’, for example, is a beautifully understated poem. She has a fine ear which can evoke ‘the phrasing of spray/against sandstone’ and an eye which can see ‘floes gliding by,/chesspieces in ...”

“... from adult cells, the conclusion that adult mammals could not be cloned, a journalistic hoax (David Rorvik’s announcement that he had helped a wealthy eccentric clone himself), a brilliant experimentalist (Karl Illmensee) accused of faking results, and, finally, a small band of mavericks working outside the prestigious centres of biotechnology in the ...”

“... Bishop’s poems convey the feel of the gap between perception and understanding, between the grand truths we may want and can almost feel coming into being, and the rush of often bewildering particulars we actually experience. The poems do not announce this teetering on the brink of epiphany, but dramatise it, which makes it hard to convey the complexity ...”

“... of his marriage, much of the speech is unremarkable. (Their love, represented by the Bechstein grand piano that my grandparents were given on their silver anniversary, nearly cost her her life. Unwilling to leave it, she stayed in Hamburg for 12 years after her husband’s death. She finally left in December 1939; the Bechstein stayed; his music scores ...”

“... them by the lottery of inheritance and who could not manage without their mayors of the palace or grand viziers, especially in their minorities or inexperienced beginnings. But this did not satisfy Bérenger, who preferred a less personal, more structured analysis in terms of the growing complexity of the Early Modern state, which favoured the interposition ...”

“... York put on a solo exhibition of his work, and he founded Magnum with three others: Robert Capa, David Seymour (known as ‘Chim’) and George Rodger. When he saw his friend’s show in New York, Capa advised Cartier-Bresson to be cautious. ‘You will be labelled the little surrealist photographer,’ he wrote: ‘you will be lost, and will become precious ...”

“... Unionists as parochial know-nothings. Revisionist historians, most prominently Ian McBride and David Livingstone, have demonstrated that the history of Ulster Presbyterianism from the 18th century is characterised by intellectual richness, an openness to science, a commitment to progress and a taste for theological heterodoxy, notwithstanding backwoods ...”

“... 16th arrondissement and walked a block, he was charmed by the fen-like view down the rue Félicien-David. His piece appeared a day or so later in L’Intransigeant, by which time people were comparing the streets of the city, dotted with dinghies and skiffs, to the waterways of Venice, but Apollinaire was reminded of a visit to Dordrecht. He recalled a small ...”

“... walked to Heathrow several times before, and it can be done fairly peacefully: either along the Grand Union Canal and across Hounslow Heath, or else via the Thames, Richmond Park, Twickenham and the River Crane. But these were walks that terminated at the terminals: now we would have to pass by the vast urban veldt. The first day, we followed the southerly ...”

“... question. Kermode invites us to pause over the elaborate social coding of Annan’s description of David Eccles as ‘a Wykehamist with the manner (so Etonians said) of a Harrovian’ – but also over the blunter evocation of Richard Hoggart as ‘the grammar school extramural lecturer’. Our Age had its traditions, ‘was a gentleman’, as Kermode ...”