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“... jokes – or the wrong kind of unseriousness – is unlikely to inspire confidence in a reader who may already feel compromised by the fact that he is reading such a book: is he an earnest saddie, one of those people who needs an explanation for everything, and particularly his pleasure? Books that explain poems, or dreams, or even sex can add to our pleasure ...”

“... which he calls Uniqueness, has been less noticed in recent philosophy than the other three, but it may be what most attracted Putnam in the first place. After a decade and more in which pragmatists, relativists and other kinds of anti-realist have been so busy maligning the three theses of Independence, Correspondence and Bivalence, it is good to have the ...”

“... about seven thousand taken prisoner, while the British had 449 killed and 1241 wounded. It may be that Mr Keegan, a military historian, was not the ideal person to write about Trafalgar: his notions of a brace and many other things belonging to a sailing ship are imprecise, and in speaking of Nelson’s plan of attack, aimed at breaking the enemy line ...”

“... of the poet William Blake, “One Law for the Lion and Ox is Tyranny”.’ To scientists, Dyson may be best known for his work in physics shortly after World War Two. Many equations in quantum field theory were producing meaningless, infinite figures. Dyson helped, if not to eliminate the infinities, then at least to sweep them under the carpet so that ...”

“... poetry used regularly to be left out of Australian anthologies, but that is an old bad habit we may have grown out of by now. Mr James’s name attracts far more affection than odium, and he gets away with astounding things on his return visits. I have, by way of the tube, witnessed his telling a whole large roomful of sleek women journalists, in ...”

“... a witch’s smile of appreciation. He is clearly familiar with and fond of that cat. The smile may have come as a surprise to connoisseurs of pictures of the author which have been issued to the world. These pictures, rarely cordial, have become more and more baleful: it is as if he is holding himself back from physical assault on a reader supposed to be a ...”

“... them either, since they inhabit a different culture which is incommensurable with our own. They may think that we are raiding their raw materials and exploiting their labour power, but that is just because they have never heard of the civilising mission of the West. The felicitous upshot is that nobody can ever criticise Fish, since if their criticisms are ...”

“... and a rationalist, who never lost his equilibrium.’ Rationality, we are invited to conclude, may be good for you in doses but can wither the spirit; beyond a certain point its study becomes the province of moral pathology. It has not always been thought so, but there would be few dissenters nowadays. So when David Pears writes of his book, Motivated ...”

“... with a favourable answer’ from Dr Busby’s ‘goodnesse and moderation’, so that he may continue his ‘obliged humble servant’, as, of course, every father with a boy at the school would wish to be. A different world? Not at all, as regards the complex of essential relations between pupils, masters and parents. Manners have softened, and a ...”

“... power of the raped and dying woman’. So the work is not as tightly composed as Donaldson may wish it to be – although this is not the defect he may fear it is. The parts of the book are unequal, since Lucretia has all the thunder (St ...”

“... of a work by someone else. All the same, it is possible to wonder whether the Potter work may not have got through to him, for these Unreliable Memoirs play a similar game. While keeping you aware of what he has since become in journalism and in show business, Clive James climbs back into his shorts and re-enacts the experience of being an outsiderish ...”

“... I “know” that I have lost something irrecoverable.’ This is an outrageous story: but one may admire it for that, for its mischievous invention, and for its limited awareness of such gestures and proportions as a baby might truly have observed. It brings to mind what Roth said about his revered Heine: ‘Maybe he did make up the odd fact, but then he ...”

“... in leather manacles’ – in other words, a slave, or at least a servant. The wondering layman may think that if you believe that, you will believe anything, but etymology somewhat resembles theology: given the initial act of faith, the logic of the argument is irresistible. In this case the philological reasoning is indeed quite sound, but the pleasure of ...”

“... might have brought him a bull of excommunication as a birthday gift. Even an improper noise may call forth uninvited guests, unfriendly critics: the explosive start of Inside Mr Enderby is a fart, succeeded by ghostly mutterings: PFFFRRRRUMMMP.   And a very happy New Year to you too, Mr ...”

“... interest themselves in the “economic and social forces which underlie the history of people” may overlook.’ Here the situation is a little different. There is a historian of Antiquity who has argued lucidly and at length on the possible relationship between early Greek commerce and coinage, and the capacity for abstract thinking which found ultimate ...”