“... it’s wrong fact. But then Mr Morton (who should call himself Mandelbaum: I don’t call myself John Kingsley either) is simply washing his and his parents’ Viennese linen in public, burdened by his past rather than by knowledge or insight. In fact, while Schorske’s ignorance is selective, Morton’s is comprehensive, encompassing as it does psychology ...”

“... that English literature had already been taking up the swelling theme of empire – a new book by John McVeagh has much to say about this. ‘How can one write the history of the English-speaking peoples and their empires?’ – a large question on which Calder must have long deliberated before striking out his path. There has been discussion lately as to ...”

“... the political-social mind would be in accord. One of our most revered nationalist rebels, John Mitchel, may illustrate. Born about a hundred years ago, a freedom-fighter, transported to Van Diemen’s Land, escaped to America, he was honoured there until he was found to be in favour of black slavery. So, from the paper called the Citizen (New ...”

“... saved or lost.’ She was sure that the devil is present in creation. She and the novelist John Hawkes had a lot to say to each other about the devil in the course of their correspondence, although in The Habit of Being we get only O’Connor’s portion of this exchange. (The trouble with books like this one is that the reader feels as if he or she ...”

“... them, politics was a matter of upholding ancient Catholic values, values which in the Church of John XXIII even the Pope had his doubts about. The Army was a threat to democratic government, not only because it had the force required to overthrow a civilian government, but because dialogue with it was impossible. Although highly-politicised, the generals ...”

“... intellectual in politics’ in the sense in which that description applies, for instance, to John Stuart Mill (or even perhaps to Arthur Balfour). Brougham’s intellect could serve him superbly in political life, especially perhaps in the mastery of complex subjects displayed in some of his astonishing speeches. Yet the great 1828 speech on law ...”

“... In the early summer of 1931, as the storm centre of the century’s worst depression roared back towards a Germany where already 4.5 million people were out of work, the Nazi Party for the first time faced the fact that it might be elected to government. ‘Finance capitalism’, which they had been lambasting for 12 years, had got the country into just the mess they had predicted ...”

“... far when he writes that ‘Dulles carried messages; he did not make policy.’ Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a powerful formulator of policies. Eisenhower had a rather arm’s-length view of the separation of powers: Congress was not normally to be too much chivvied by the White House, nor was Congressional curiosity about his executive office to ...”

“... contains innumerable engaging asides – for example, the allusion to an old servant, known to John Aubrey, who had at his fingertips a complete history of England’s kings in ballad form. He is good on the vicissitudes of the old folk tale, which aroused deprecation, during the rational 18th century, on account of its outlandish elements (we find ...”

“... Communist leader Kim Il Sung came to Russia twice and planned the invasion with Stalin. But, as John Merrill demonstrated in the Journal of Korean Studies (1981), the published version differs in important respects from what Khrushchev says on the tapes. On the tapes, Khrushchev gets the date of the confirmed visit by Kim out by a whole year – when timing ...”

“... the veil of illusion; such is Hamlet’s doctrine, not to be confounded with the cheap wisdom of John-a-Dreams, who through too much reflection, as it were a surplus of possibilities, never arrives at action. It may seem nasty, or pointless, or perhaps romantically wayward, to place these items alongside the rest of what has been said. Hamlet Closely ...”

“... he speaks is crammed with lovely words that could refresh the written language. Though he worships John Clare, Longley does not follow Clare in using dialect, and yet there is at the heart of his imagination a similar shyness and gentleness, a finely humane outlook with an almost mystical texture and cherishing puzzlement. Like Clare, Longley has a special ...”

“... of Western Orientalism and of Eastern Occidentalism, both of which Tagore confounded. Edward John Thompson (1886-1946) was then an educational missionary at the Wesleyan College at Bankura. He had published several volumes of verse, and was approaching proficiency in Bengali. After a brief meeting in Calcutta, Tagore invited him to visit him at his ...”

“... happens to contain a spelling mistake of his own: the fact that one of his American Modernists is John Ashbery, whose name Stead cannot spell, gives one little confidence in the quality of the information underlying these Modernist choices. Stead is a vigorous writer, and there are pages in this book that are stronger than my review suggests. But it is ...”

“... and now’ but placing it anew. Her reading in Victorian wave-theory, particularly the work of John Tyndall (a reading with which she endows Clarissa Dalloway) means that she can, in a non-technical way, re-appraise the current world from yet another distance. Her ‘contact with the real is more varied’ than an entirely social reading of her work ...”