“... and the fate of the Jews. But the lessons I draw from them, the ways I see them combined, may not – by the end – be those most obviously expected. Because of Dreyfus, therefore Israel. It is an argument that many find unanswerable: the crimes perpetrated by the French state against the Jewish officer heralded, for those who could hear, the end of ...”

“... Julius was the original name, but one may as well call him Groucho, from the ‘grouch bag’ carried by travelling showmen. His parents were Jewish immigrants: Simon Marrix, of a family of tailors from Alsace-Lorraine, and Minna Schoenberg, the daughter of a Dutch magician who emigrated when his work in Germany ran out in the 1870s ...”

“... and the de facto fragmentation of Zaire is underway. In the end all these quasi-independent states may fail, as Ian Smith’s did, but equally, the map of southern Africa may look very different twenty years from now. The politics of liberation will certainly not be much like the ANC’s dreams in exile. Let us ...”

“... which should have gone east to Slavonia in autumn 1991 were diverted south to Herzegovina, which may have been threatened, but wasn’t fighting for its life. The Croat communities in Herzegovina declared autonomy from the government in Sarajevo; and when the Bosnian Serbs and the Yugoslav Army launched their war in April 1992, the bonds between these ...”

“... announcement on the editorial tannoy, ‘There is another version of these lines in T.MS, which may not be quoted,’ and rejoice that the College has, as Ricks puts it, ‘chosen one form of piety over another’. The remark shows something like superhuman restraint when you consider that the ban was lifted later in the same year that his edition was ...”

“... less willing to give high-minded nonsense the benefit of the doubt. Fifty years from now, someone may recall today’s theoretical Stalinoids as chevaliers servants, although this seems unlikely. Kermode’s view of the sorry state of criticism, in any event, is not an artifact of seniority: in the early Fifties he ended his introduction to the Arden Tempest ...”

“... wanted terrorist’ is well on his way to becoming a Pakistani hero. Contrary to what outsiders may think, his popularity is not confined to the plebeian sections of the city: many middle-class students are searching for extreme solutions in the guise of religion, and not just in Lahore. This city, more than any other, is an accurate guide to what is going ...”

“... all directors’ cameras are cold anyway. Think of Bertolucci, say, in comparison with Buñuel. It may help to return to one or two of the images and associations I mentioned earlier. The striking thing about the tracking shots in Paths of Glory is that they are taken from two diametrically opposed angles. In the first set, the camera is our eye, or Kirk ...”

“... Rabelais never attacked individuals first. Even comic symbols such as Janotus de Bragmardo may be treated quite kindly in the end. But when the Sorbonne tried to censure Rabelais he mocked its syndic without mercy. When Calvin, the orientalist Postel and Gabriel Dupuysherbault (a censoring monk) attacked him, he answered back. The Tiers Livre shows ...”

“... the sort of man and artist he is, an “exhilarated despair”, and so – however resolutely it may avoid anything in the nature of sermonising – it cannot but reflect the painful yet lyrical disturbance felt by all those who, living in these times of horror spangled with enchantment, can contemplate them with lucidity ... Although the artist himself ...”

“... not agree amongst themselves what to propose. The British contrived to hold out even as late as 3 May 1945: then Eden accepted a typically diplomatic compromise, in that he agreed in principle to trials so long as the Americans could devise a workable procedure for them. The moderates among the American officials renewed their efforts. They won a substantial ...”

“... end of Kipling. When copyright runs out, his work will be published extensively in paperback, and may or may not be read. Kipling is a writer between readerships: no longer anything like as popular as he once was, but not quite unpopular enough to be included in courses on Modernism or The Short Story. His reputation ...”

“... my men and boy friends, has been the one guiding principle in my life, and has inspired anything I may have been vouchsafed to accomplish in the nature of the influencing or the building up of character. There may be many comrade friends, there can only be one comrade wife.’ ‘His very sexlessness,’ Crawford ...”

“... waiting for the next Morris as Dickens’s readers waiting for the next number of Bleak House. We may expect to be entertained or shocked or instructed by other novelists’ next novel – if that next novel ever gets written, as too often it does not. But what we expect from Morris, and what he consistently gives us – every year or so another lovely ...”

“... as inimical to the revivalist ideal as were the empire men or the shallow cosmopolitans.’ This may be the case, but it is likely that all three in the first list enjoyed some aspects of the Revival, and took advantage of it whenever they could. Kiberd manages most of the time to repel the attacks of Joyce and O’Casey on the invention of ...”