“... not very left-wing – reforms: regional government had been introduced in the spring, and in May, the Statuto dei Lavoratori guaranteed a number of workplace rights. Most important, a few days before the Borghese coup, the Bill legalising divorce, passed in November 1969, became law. Spain, Greece and Portugal all had Fascist governments: democratic ...”

“... millennium in which the championship was a two-horse race – and a very close race, so that there may never be a consensus lasting more than fifty years as to which of them was the winner. Nevertheless, there is a clear distinction in their greatness, one relating purely to its nature, not its degree. It’s that Matisse did not possess or need to possess ...”

“... and the ground in Yellowstone has risen by as much as 70 centimetres in the past century; this may or may not be lava building up. But the evidence is not always easy to interpret. DNA sequencing shows that leguminous plants in the Horn of Africa are more closely related to those living in similar climates in the ...”

“... there is ice hockey, a second home by a lake, and French spoken. The cultural life of a family may be so self-contained and self-referential that it can be transplanted into another continent and the difference will scarcely show. The five Weiss siblings, three boys and two girls, are bright, witty, full of promise. The precise flavour of their ...”

“... a state of Woosterdom or Woolfness; at least in America people in novels still seem to work. This may have something to do with undergraduates reading Emerson and Thoreau, or it may have something to do with everyone needing health insurance. People who read novels in Britain and Ireland generally do so on holiday from ...”

“... this character, this old woman approaching death in Provence – is said not to have worked. We may have forgotten that the old lady is a fiction, a character writing a ‘dying diary’ and not Christine Brooke-Rose, whose actual plight hers so much resembles. The old lady has a bad fall, uses a zimmer frame but cannot quench the fires in her feet. Nor can ...”

“... up the collection hoping for documentary evidence of the sort found in the best oral histories may come away thinking that the defining characteristic of America is the shaggy dog story. Too often, reading this book feels like being trapped by boring uncles at a Thanksgiving dinner table. That’s not to suggest that a reader can’t, with a certain amount ...”

“... of white racism was already on its way to becoming gospel. But Turnbull called it as he saw it; he may have been wrong, he was certainly subjective, judgmental and naive. His personal life (as we say) added to the myth of the handsome, charming hero. He was born in 1924, the child of a distant Scottish father and an eccentric Irish mother, who, despite being ...”

“... There is still a social stigma around HIV and many will avoid the test if they can.’ But that may change: Unicef are soon to encourage community groups to tie family relief payments to recipients’ willingness to go to school and also to be tested for HIV. A fire was burning and red ants were running up the bark of the logs. Agnes and Irene were playing ...”

“... connections), the old man tears up both letter and photo and flings them into a lake, so that they may ‘gradually rot in the water, just as memories do in the swamps of time’. But though the story is a record of continuous loss, there is no sentimentality, and very little self-pity. Instead, Andrés’s language shows the same grim determination – or at ...”

“... this recovery of ‘circumstance’ has an invigorating effect on the myths Warner examines. It may be that historical time is richer in the contradiction and instability that keep myths vital than the unchanging Dreamtime or Time of Origins (‘illo tempore’) designated as the true locus of myth by Mircea Eliade. Or perhaps it is simply that Warner is ...”

“... self-assertiveness which he held, following Emerson, to be everyman’s potential. ‘The humblest may say: "To respect myself, to develop myself – this is my true duty in life.”’ It is difficult now to grasp how revolutionary this message was in 1859, when for generations ‘duty’ had been defined almost solely in relation to others, principally ...”

“... as they did their former oppressors; indeed, the canto’s opening suggests that the oppressor may be housed even within the very terms of freedom: Black Consciousness. The Whiteman’s soul is black. The shadow of his body is more native to the Earth than he is. This, an adaptation of Steve Biko’s taunt to well-meaning white liberals who thought they ...”

“... a stuff about them,’ Norm grunted, still bent over his taxidermy efforts on a giant prawn. Norm may be a repository of ancient tribal wisdom, a man true to the covenant of the ancestral serpent, one who ‘could grab hold of the river in his mind and live with it as his father’s fathers did before him’, but he is also inconveniently married to the ...”

“... risks, he is ruthlessly competitive, brash, and bullies people who work for him. His presidency may be remembered for its profligacy. On the Friday when it was announced that the merchant bank Bear Stearns – famous for its risk-taking, cigar-chomping deal-making – was close to bankruptcy, Bush addressed the Economic Club of New York. He said it was ...”