“... that there will always be ‘conflicts between one way of life and another’; that pacifism may promote war rather than prevent it, because it is more interested in giving the pacifist a clear conscience than in navigating the rough seas of actually existing hostilities; that deceit may sometimes be a political ...”

“... For the first time I’m nervous flying to Belfast. It’s early morning, Friday 22 May, and radio reports tell of streams of voters heading to the polls. As I buy the Irish Times at the newstand in Terminal One, I catch sight of one of my graduate students – we nod and smile quickly. He’s flying to Cork to vote Yes ...”

“... during the fall of Malaga in February 1937, and was imprisoned in Seville until the following May, spending much of his time in solitary confinement and in constant fear of the firing squad. Out of his experiences in Russia and Spain came Darkness at Noon, which was published in 1940. Cesarani quotes Michael Foot to apt effect: Who will ever forget the ...”

“... causes of the indifference English critics have on the whole maintained toward literary theory. It may even have served to justify indifference to what Northrop Frye called for, and called ‘a coherent and comprehensive theory of literature, logically and scientifically organised, some of which the student unconsciously learns as he goes on, but the main ...”

“... say less? I wasn’t for a moment pretending to characterise the nature of the relations that may conduce to that possibility – relations, on your part I mean, with the man to be divorced, which in themselves are none of my business at all. But your position, as a result of those relations – if I had it to speak of again I am afraid I could only speak ...”

“... philosophers of language. Most of us will doubtless have heard of grammar. But what exactly, we may well ask, is ‘philosophy of language’? According to one view, it is ‘the foundation of all other philosophy’ (Dummett). But does it stand in the same relation to linguistics as philosophy of science to science? Or in the rather different relation ...”

“... and the epilogue is placed at the front of the book, before the main text even begins. This may be a Lutyens-like joke: but such lack of concern for proportion and arrangement seems peculiarly out of place, given the subject of the book. Most of the dwellings described here were not so much country houses as houses in the country: rustic retreats for ...”

“... might say that Johnston conveyed more gallop and Thomas a more lapidary roar. Thomas’s effect may derive to some extent from his decision to use blank verse, because it seemed ‘fitting that, for this central work of Russian literature, our natural and national English metre, blank verse, should replace Russia’s, the rhymed tetrameter.’ The immediate ...”

“... ruling principle’ of events ‘for Joyce, as for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’ – but Martin may be referring to Gus Nietzsche, since Schopie Boy turns out to be called Arnold. Where there is a critical problem – like Lawrence’s confused use of Wagner in Women in Love – Martin remembers other appointments. But then anybody who can say that Wagner ...”

“... of the family worried about propriety and suppressed unflattering information. Sometimes we may forgive them. Arnold’s wife Fanny Lucy (‘Flu’) struck out all favourable references to herself – exactly why? At other times we encounter outright lies or convenient omissions. Matthew skipped out on his sister Jane’s wedding to William Forster of ...”

“... underground, now legalised and enjoying a considerable implantation. Whatever concessions Carrillo may wish to make to Suarez’s succession in the way of moderated class politics, the base of the PCE in a restive and robust industrial working class will limit any dilution of economic militancy. The pact of Moncloa could not prevent the Spanish proletariat ...”

“... sample! The authors’ eagerness to produce statements which are true for the nation as a whole may be attractive to politicians but could result in sociological nonsense. Statistics applied to large samples of very large populations effectively eliminate from consideration all exceptional cases. But if generalisations approximating to laws of nature are to ...”

“... coped with by older methods. Relative factor prices in the English coal industry and in spinning may have delayed the introduction of machine mining or ring spindles for higher yarn counts, but there is no evidence, even counterfactual evidence, that such introductions would have been beneficial, as Kirby has recently shown.* In the long run, certain ...”

“... machinery is here Clear day, clear room, plain desk, The hand, symbol of power, Here the veins may pour Into the deed, as the field Into the standing corn. The simple machinery is here Clear room clear day clear desk And the hand with its power To make the heart pour Into the word, as the sun Moves upward through the corn. This same poem tells us that ...”

“... counter-revolution the economic element carries more weight than the cultural one. Mrs Thatcher may not have succeeded in her declared aim of ‘killing socialism’, but some at least of her privatisation, de-regulation and demotion of union rights has come to stay. Indeed Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley are making it increasingly plain that many items of ...”