“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Changelings, centaurs, ogres and elves may no longer inhabit the earth, but occasionally we run into their descendants: people so monstrous, incandescent, or freakishly themselves that only a quasi-supernatural description seems to do them justice. In the 20th century they come in all shapes and sizes: from the obvious ghouls and werewolves (Rasputin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Jeffrey Dahmer) to various mid-rank demigods and unicorn-people (T ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... downsizing simply means that some Americans are being forced to move to better jobs – GM may fire you but Microsoft will hire you, and Microsoft jobs are better. Buchanan is of course in the wrong party to advance the interests of America’s lower-paid employees and unpaid ex-employees. He is also contaminated by extreme-right associations and past ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... discordantly, so that they seem out of place in reality, fictions declaring their artifice. It may be said – he has said as much himself – that Godard just isn’t very good at telling stories, and borrows them from here and there without really believing in them. But out of that deficiency he has made an aesthetic, a Modernist aesthetic in which the ...”

“... the powerful religious impulse behind Robespierre’s thought, she also understands revolution. It may seem an odd claim to make, but so many of the people who have written about Robespierre, and about the Revolution in general, don’t seem to understand why the people of ’89 didn’t stay quietly at home waiting for evolutionary change. Scurr reminds us ...”

“... The British Army occupied Jerusalem on Sunday, 9 December 1917, and withdrew on 14 May 1948. During its brief imperium in the Promised Land, Britain kept the promise made in 1917 by its Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, in the Declaration that bears his name, ‘to favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ...”

“... setting them aside in a separate, unpublished volume entitled ‘Vita Sexualis’. What remains may not be technically explicit, but Richie is unabashed in discussing ‘the goût de la boue’, which for sixty years has been the complement to his intellectual and artistic pursuits. By day and in the evenings, he has moved among artists, writers and ...”

“... George and Clemenceau to rescind their wartime promises to Japan. News of China’s failure in May 1919 brought enraged students out on the streets of Beijing, denouncing the US president as a liar. Demonstrations and strikes erupted across China in what would later be known as the May Fourth Movement, an explosion of ...”