“... illuminating contrast with Anna’s, whose favourite reading (The Thorn Birds, The Far Pavilions) may be held to have debased her sensibility but has no effect whatever on her sensible way of talking. This is not just a trick, but evidence of seriousness. Loving Roger is about a relationship that is in itself not unusual, and sexually satisfactory, but which ...”

“... other authors, mostly fairies, twittering all over the place, screaming “Oh, Lionel!” ’ This may make George Orwell seem rather naive for having made the otherwise useful observation that: ‘how closely Wodehouse sticks to conventional morality can be seen from the fact that nowhere in his books is there anything in the nature of a sex joke. This is an ...”

“... exact nature of the potential ‘native’ vegetable-and meat-supply is not spelled out; and that may be as well for Malouf’s purpose, since it is indicated that Sir George’s estate grows strawberries, grapes, peaches and asparagus; grazes deer, Breton cows, and an Arabian bull; and runs peacocks and pheasants. There is a slight oddness about the shaping ...”

“... warmongers genuinely admired père la victoire. When France was on the edge of total defeat, in May and June 1918, Clemenceau more than any one stood for a united nation. Oblivious as always of social cleavage, he assumed that, in war as in peace, France could only have a single, war like will – his own. For this latterday Jacobin, the nation had become ...”

“... University of Southern California, and his fiction often relies on the kind of farmboy irony that may come naturally to Ross Perot, but which appears to have been institutionalised in some American creative writing programmes. In such stories, the setting is the affluent suburbs: the Mercedes is in the garage, the National Geographic is on the table, and the ...”

“... Evans. Chatwin understood the aesthete; and even the humbler inhabitants of What am I doing here may be pinioned by a description of dress, from the Chinese who ‘wore a blue silk Nina Ricci tie, a gold wristwatch with a crocodile strap, and an immaculate worsted grey suit’ to the immortalised functionary in London’s Afghan Embassy who ‘had cut off ...”

“... to me, will always be at the head of this letter. Though the chief emphasis is on how Muñiz may be of service to him, Darwin shows respect for Muñiz’s efforts and his admiring astonishment that a man can carry on without colleagues to discuss his work with. He does more. He writes on Muñiz’s behalf to the influential Richard Owen of the Royal ...”

“... one both in Nato and the Community. If Michael Heseltine can stake out a distinctive position, he may even win some of the middle opinion that Mrs Thatcher never attracted and now positively repels. His European message is certainly attractive to those in all parties who voted for Britain’s entry to the Common Market eighteen years ago, and to their heirs ...”

“... Not even the most intransigent of the Old Guard can see any danger in Felipe Gonzalez. Spain may be a less interesting place now but it is much more prosperous. The most obvious physical change in recent years has been caused by the emergence of the foreign car as a status symbol: the streets of Madrid are clogged by rival fleets of BMW and Mercedes ...”

“... when a work of the imagination is labelled a text, with the bare simplicity that implies. We may feel passionately about a novel, a poem, a play, but a ‘text’, all passion removed, lies on the table ready for dissection. Most of these reflections were prompted by reading a selection of Arnold Kettle’s essays. Kettle, who died in 1986, was a Marxist ...”

“... structure of theory it is attracting. Greenblatt likes to open a study with an anecdote, and may well have developed a fondness for doing so without giving a lot of consideration to its theoretical implications: but when others do so he is glad of their support. The exploitation of anecdote is a means to the construction of a more interactive view of ...”

“... obviously enjoyed writing this book (which is dedicated ‘To Andrew and Debo’). His Duke may have held no higher office than that of Lord Chamberlain, in which capacity he closed down an illicit gin-shop run in Windsor Castle by a Mrs Miller (if he censored any plays we do not hear about it). But doing is not necessarily more important than being and ...”

“... like that around why let ashes go to ashes? If you can keep yourself together long enough there may be a whole new world awaiting you. So when Dora Kent died in 1987 she was given the treatment – head only in her case. Unfortunately the operatives who decided she was dead were not licensed physicians. With the head safely in the ‘cephalarium ...”

“... reformer’s abode; aggrieved defendants, or would-be litigants unable to afford the cost of law, may seek a Sedleian subtext in Warr’s consistent championing of equality against the forms of the law, and in his protests at the law’s discriminations in favour of power and interest. ‘Who would not blush to behold seemingly grave and learned sages prefer ...”

“... too, the hideous Globocnik. He was also a real figure, captured by a British Army patrol in May 1945, whereupon he bit on a cyanide capsule and died. So he couldn’t have smashed Xavier March’s hand with a baseball bat in 1964! The whole thing has been a feat of gloomy make-believe. We needn’t grieve for Zavie any more. Is this the fatal weakness ...”