“... new greasiness on her, she’s wringing her hands in grief or in greediness or in both. * So … may the words of her mouth and the meditations of her heart be acceptable. Come on, God! Oh Lord. And her grabbiness. I’m Sure I Love and I Really I took notice of the protrusion of my wife’s mouth that then drooped and of every buttoned-up button on her ...”

“... reader also found some of the author’s comments rather intrusive. ‘My guess is ...’ ‘There may be something to this ...’ ‘I am inclined to believe ...’ or ‘More important, it seems to me ...’ And one has the impression that he likes his history to fit. He is also too inclined to have his pointers out – ‘Now we move on again, to the West ...”

“... A version of ‘Solo de lune’ by Jules LaforgueI smoke, spread outBeneath the evening sky on the top deckOf a careering stagecoach, every boneIn my body rattling, jangling – but my soulIs a dancing Ariel, my soulWhirls beyond bitterness and cloyingHoney, beyond the passingRoads and hills and valleys and evenMy own tobacco fumes … and dancing it recallsThat we fell crazily in love … and yet we partedWithout mentioningThe fact: spleen drove me away, spleen, all-Invading spleen ...”

“... violently lashing out with all resources at his disposal. The persistent calls for regime change may well be moving him into that dangerous ‘back against the wall’ posture. Disturbing, if not particularly surprising; and certainly not a case for war. ‘Of one thing we can be sure,’ Post concludes, ‘this is a man who “will not go gentle into that ...”

“... he says, if he was going to spend months working on a face it should be one he liked. Styles may change, but some things just keep coming back. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1984 Brown Spots (Portrait of Andy Warhol as a Banana) is a really nice picture, if a little mysterious – the best the catalogue can do is suggest that the partly peeled banana with ...”

“... Year wasn’t celebrated. You wouldn’t catch George Bush making that kind of mistake. Babylon may have been destroyed, but the traditions of its kings live on: witness the multimillion-dollar maximum-security inauguration extravaganza in Washington on 20 January – or, for that matter, the annual state opening of ...”

“... of Iowa, who says in his new book, Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth (due from Harvard in May), that ‘Pluto is cold; Chicago in January is merely inconvenient.’ For those of us still languishing in the dark ages of terrestrial analogue TV, the gloom is deepened by the fog that currently envelops BBC2’s schedules: the Winter Olympics. The last ...”

“... driver. FMD, the tragic traincrash (ten dead) yesterday are what we talk about: Heddon-on-the-Wall may be infected from untreated swill, the micro virus and the cattle plague that could cross borders between bloc and bloc when the world was so divided, let alone unpatrolled farm fences, ditch and lane. The taxi’s heater’s fierce, we discuss the icicles ...”

“... everything. She waited for a lullthen ran out again and yelled: All hail, whoeveryou may be, and rejoice – for my mistress,who was in such pain, is delivered by the action of Zeusand has a fine and healthy son!Eileithyia springing to her feet, limbs flying apart,came towards the girl in disbelief to shake her,to find if it could be real, that ...”

“... since October.On the happy feast of Ruadanevery beak is opened, and from this,the seventeenth of May, the cuckoocalls non-stop in her thicket.In Tallaght, birds pause their songson the ninth of July for Mael Ruain,undefeated by the carrion crow,the bird of war. We pray for her protection.Across cold seas the barnacle geese arriveon the day of Ciaran the ...”

“... conservative Hard SF writers of the 1980s, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.‘Extrapolation’ may be a purer ideal. The term is imported from mathematics: a writer, keenly observing the world around them, can measure its trends and implications, then offer persuasive suppositions about what comes next. Yet, like multi-tasking or Tantric sex, extrapolation ...”

“... I do not.’ Five days later, ‘there are accounts of the Hitler regime cracking.’ Then, on 5 May 1940, ‘I prophesy that [Chamberlain] will weather this storm.’Channon’s mutterings seem to confirm the view that many members of the English upper class were appeasers and defeatists, if not crypto-Nazis, as does Nicolson’s comment in ...”

“... a mother figure of one’s choosing. ‘This mother who is also a stranger,’ Perry writes, ‘may thus enable the heroine’s independent moral existence.’ Mothers get in the way in fiction: they take up space that is better occupied by indecision, by hope, by the slow growth of a personality, and – as the novel itself develops – by the idea of ...”

“... tells of the manner in which he treated one of his patients – treated and of course, as you may imagine, cured. One morning he placed Mr A., his patient, in a shower-room. He makes him recount in detail his delirium. ‘But all that,’ said the doctor, ‘is nothing but madness. Promise me not to believe in it any more.’ The patient hesitates, then ...”

“... years told us they had to sign non-disclosure agreements just to enter the building.Such wariness may be understandable. In 2023 two hundred people blockaded the offices in protest against the decision to award Palantir a £330 million contract to supply NHS England with data integration and analysis software. Last October activists from a group called Shut ...”