“... area of research but has a powerful explanatory value – ‘I suddenly see how geography may explain the history of culture.’ This is a strong claim and how far it stands up to scrutiny, judged on Moretti’s own terms, is moot. Everything else, on virtually every page of this book, is fascinating. But what of its theoretical bedrock? The argument ...”

“... causes and forms, political and social as well as religious and theological. ‘The’ Reformation may be the greatest myth of all. Although ‘it’ was described, as recently as 1996, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, as a ‘world-historical event’, there turn out to have been all sorts of events, reformations in lower case, as the glaciers ...”

“... not neglected, but more context and commentary are required if they are to be understood. Palumbo may have been inspired in his conduct by American museum trustees, who often, and not always unreasonably, behave as if they own the institution they represent. It was under Thatcher that the traditional role of the museum trustee in this country began to be ...”

“... take it, is that if practical, adaptative emotions are replaced by others, we do not simply, as it may seem, withdraw from the world. We change it, or it changes with us. I don’t know how far we can go with Musil down this road, or how far he himself, ever the target of his own irony, believed we could go. But the mode of thinking shown here, what Musil ...”

“... notorious role, persuading said daughters to boil their father to death. It came third, and you may well have thought this Medea of over twenty years later would be an improved version of the same tale, designed to carry off first prize second time around, but the Nurse who recites the prologue passes quickly over all those other dramatic Medeas and leaves ...”

“... can offer a class which has them. No wonder New Labour cannot find the appropriate ideology. It may well be that this is unnecessarily pessimistic. It is certainly the case that the broad middle class is now the one that matters, but it is perfectly possible to devise a coherent political programme which is consonant both with the traditions of the Labour ...”

“... employees somewhere in the middle and the actual right to use people as chattels – goods that may be bought, sold or exchanged – at the other. And in precolonial Africa, for instance, where rates of natural population growth achieved by marrying and begetting were consistently low, it was customary to augment households by acquiring people ...”

“... to the Ukraine and acted fast: within weeks he had analysed the desperate situation there and by May 1922 was successfully overseeing the distribution of relief. The following year, he went back to Kharkov, and found the situation much improved. When the work ended, he decided not to return to the General Staff: he accepted an offer of early retirement and ...”

“... Right was less reluctant to contemplate violence, and urged the military to intervene, though it may have been surprised by the ferocity of the coup. By 11 September 1973 Allende had run out of options. Pinochet, who had leapfrogged to the top of the list of senior generals the previous month (an early indication that he was Allende’s equal in political ...”

“... will help to reflate the economy of country A. If country A reflates while country B deflates, it may do more to raise output and employment in the market-hungry export industries of country B than in the industries within its own borders. If it reflates alone, while countries B to Z are all busily deflating, its reflation ...”

“... The English are not at their best, although they may well be at their most characteristic, when they go on a lot about the dear old days at school or the ’varsity. Not even the inspired Cyril Connolly could get his tongue far enough into his cheek to be anything more tolerable than stomach-turning about Eton. George Orwell, who had been there too but thought it was possible to have a life afterwards, was surely right to tell him to come off it ...”

“... he occupies the post himself, also as a retirement benefit from a federal government. Whitlam may not see the irony. Hawke, one may be sure, does. Hawke not only tempted Whitlam to leave the country, but behaved in his first six months in exactly the opposite way from Whitlam. Whitlam did everything. Hawke did nothing ...”

“... to the left. The Labour share is 28 per cent. Even in the Polytechnics, whatever their reputation may be, the Labour share is 32 per cent. The favoured parties of academics are those of the Liberal/SDP Alliance. Yet this is in many ways an apolitical, even anti-political stance. Few Alliance votes come from the deeply committed; most are a protest against ...”

“... the opening scene, deeply conventional – and not necessarily the worse for that. For, however we may praise originality, it is at least as important that art should be conventional. The best artists work not for ignorant but for trained audiences, which is why they are properly suspected of élitism. Novelists operate by satisfying certain prior ...”

“... a single text, he manages to suggest immensely. The scheme of cultural history he often draws on may not be very impressive – it is a kind of Romantic primitivism he shares with Burke, Coleridge, Cobbett and Dickens, the wish of Barrie’s Peter Pan that our lives could be simple and protected, like children’s, and that society had never had to grow ...”