“... 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 ...”

“... Generosity, Pertinacity, Bliss. That the appearance of a figure ever conveyed these qualities may now be open to doubt. What is true is that the emblems of today are totally divorced from such elevated concepts and have become downgraded into advertisements for one’s self, predominantly for one’s sexual self. After reading The Language of Clothes one ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... and Larkin the remark is certainly suggestive, almost literal. As the sight of almost any woman may be a fantasy for a man, so their world of looking and language is to these poets. In revising ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ Keats was very conscious of the contrast between poetic daydream and the physical reality of a seduction. He wouldn’t think much of his ...”

“... complex situation, contradicting mythological simplifications, yet showing where the roots of such may be found. Likewise, she confirms, so far as this area goes, the traditional view that lower-class Scots showed an unusual thirst for learning – as when the people of remote Glen Tilt petitioned the 3rd Duke in 1769 for a school convenient for their ...”

“... they had no scruples about turning their guns on their own side when ‘necessary’. Again, they may have begun with rough-and-ready courts-martial of informers and traitors, but fairly soon it was a matter of large-scale murder and intimidation to ensure that peasant communities gave them the supportive welcome that all the textbooks on guerrilla warfare ...”

“... open a new way of living, a new way of thinking about the world? A sage and treasure Jane Schwartz may well be, but really, outplacement counselling is pretty much just another consoling fiction. Personality makeovers and sense of humour transplants can’t do much about a shrinking jobs market, which may be one reason ...”

“... mayor of London since he succeeded Livingstone in 2008, did. As he runs for re-election on 3 May, he can say he did what he promised, sort of. Within three years of coming to power, he swept the last bendy bus off London’s roads. (In their heyday, there were four hundred.) At his behest, and in exchange for £11.4 million, a Northern Irish company ...”

“... contradiction in Western societies’ – between the need to work and the desire for play – may yet be resolved. These, evidently, are definitions for the 21st century. But Lawrence’s novel may be thought in some ways to prefigure them. Various genealogies of cool have been proposed, ever more speculative in ...”

“... knowledge, a body of opinions, and a standard of taste, which are wholly new in India. There you may see universities thronged like the European schools of the later middle age … There you may observe an eagerness in the study of Western literature and science not very unlike the enthusiasm of European scholars at the ...”

“... full niqabs, including black gloves. Alexandria, once known as the queen of the Mediterranean, may no longer be the city of ‘unsurpassable sensuality’ described by Cavafy, but it seems more serene than Cairo. Maybe that was an illusion: the only difference between Alexandria and Cairo, someone said, was the weather. Egypt’s second-largest city, with ...”

“... The use of the Lombardic style – which Pevsner noted as ‘original’ for the early 1840s – may not strike the non-specialist as particularly remarkable, but a large stone tortoise, protruding like a gargoyle from under the eaves, certainly will. A tour of the building reveals that the tortoise’s companions include a snake, a crocodile, a dragon and a ...”

“... remained Communist China’s great enemy; France, traumatised after defeat at Dien Bien Phu that May, had little to offer. But Britain, unlike the Americans, had recognised the new Chinese regime and had played a leading part in securing the Geneva Accords. It was, as Patrick Wright puts it, ‘one of the last occasions, only two years before the Suez ...”

“... fallen apart. Beyond that experience of obliteration, temporary or final, Davies’s chosen places may seem at first sight to have little in common. Their dates range from the Roman period to the 20th century. Some, like Byzantium, endured for a thousand years, while Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia’s independence lasted for less than two days. Some were gigantic in ...”