“... that he is aware of the dangers inherent in this kind of thinking, but it seems to me he does very little to avoid them. There is an assumption that the value of Modernism is not only aesthetic but moral, and not to be Modernist can earn you a severe ethical condemnation. So when Yeats remarks that if he wakes up thinking about Maud Gonne a great sweetness ...”

“... of ‘Maud’ is a survivor, since his            bury me, bury me Deeper, ever so little deeper and his embracing ‘the doom assign’d’ indicate a desire not to live. Moreover, he has madness thrust upon him, whereas Magowan has been studying to achieve it. His true forebear is Arthur Rimbaud with his ...”

“... ruthlessly opening the stitched edge of an armhole for the resetting of a sleeve. She spoke little, implacably private, not much liked. On the day of the showing, wearing yet another Chanel suit, she would sit on the stairs, looking down into the mirrored salon, watching, unwatched. Gabrielle Chanel was not a ‘legend’, as this handsome but somewhat ...”

“... era bordered on the ‘grotesque, and until that era is seen in truer perspective there can be little hope for a sophisticated US foreign policy concerning Iran.’ (Or the whole Middle East, Cottam could have added.) The New York Times summed up the new imperial mood immediately after the coup: ‘Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an ...”

“... a tawdry broadside, returning with too much pleasure to scandals uncovered by others with too little caution. The pilgrim dips his pen into the noisome ink of the Hollywood gossip-monger, until he himself stinks of the odours he means us to associate with the Kennedys. Wills leads us into the world of Presidential power by the back door. Mimicking a ...”

“... until something stops it. In space, there is no friction, no air resistance. You could aim your little spaceprobe at the Moon or Mars like a snooker ball at the end of a cue and it would roll perfectly across the true cloth of the void to the pocket you intended. But the Earth revolves at 1000 mph at the Equator, and at the same time travels through space ...”

“... course of the life, and the influences which were there from the beginning. O’Malley bears little resemblance to the archetypal Irish revolutionary as sketched by Tom Garvin: a young man from the country, aspiring and impatient, frustrated of opportunities, working at a level below that befitting his education. His Mayo background, as the son of a ...”

“... writers, artists and intellectuals, like John Steinbeck, the FSA photographers Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein, folklorists working for the Library of Congress, the economist Paul Taylor, the sociologist Carey McWilliams, and even Woodie Guthrie, who provided the words and music. The migrants were ‘plain-folks’, patriotic ...”

“... on the rationalism of Descartes: ‘Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way.’ Science, including mathematics, and the evidence of the senses have their own value, but they cannot assist the Quest: only the Imagination, the sense of mystery and wonder can provide access to the underlying Truth. But neither philosophical ...”

“... close proximity of death that he thinks the market requires, and Kellas treats his text as little more than the springboard that will eventually launch him to a movie and video-game deal. The two books, call them Descent and Rising, have an odd, uneasy relationship with each other. On the one hand, the excerpts from Rising serve to call attention to ...”

“... for years, to tea … Wilde would sit in a high-backed armchair, stretching out one hand a little towards the blaze of the wood fire on the hearth and talking of the dullest possible things to Ford Madox Brown, who … sat on the other side of the fire in another high-backed chair and, stretching out towards the flames his other hand, disagreed usually ...”

“... composers, including Martial Solal, Paul Misraki and Georges Delerue. But there was sometimes so little dialogue that his assistants wondered what the actors were supposed to do. ‘On va dilater,’ he would tell them – ‘We’re going to stretch out’ – like a jazz musician discussing how to improvise on the basis of a sketch. According to Bernard ...”

“... broken-down actor of the type one meets in railway trains or boarding houses’. His battles are little studied professionally. Only those tireless tourists, the Japanese, regularly visit his tacky, Napoleon-sized mausoleum in Norfolk, Virginia, built as part of a murky property deal by a crooked mayor who was later murdered. We still don’t know what to ...”

“... Pocket Book of 1906. His Clark Lectures of 1953, his last sustained composition, showed how little two wars had affected his creed. He defended Scott as the great social historian who had made Carlyle and Macaulay possible, vindicated Shelley against Arnold, and preached a religion of poetry: ‘It is joy, joy in our inmost hearts. It is a passion like ...”

“... doomed Edith Granger becomes Mrs Dombey with no authorial word on what she is wearing (though the little girls watching from the street memorise her attire and dress up their dolls to match it). Dickens does, however, describe the bridegroom’s over-vivid outfit, and perhaps that will do for a warning. Hughes notes that Thackeray’s non-hero is similarly ...”