“... didn’t), I’d have bothered to stop for a fight. In Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film, Peter Wollen makes no mention of Titanic, and one would rather hesitate to mention it to him. He writes as an academic, which does not mean he loves film any less than Thomson, but does mean that his love isn’t as evident. His essays sometimes cover the same ...”

“... with her: ballet of boughs sprung on the snow, moaning and glowing – your little ‘ohs’ – white-limbed doe, gracious, would I could know yet the gliding grace of all your days These lines are interesting, not as English poetry, but as an instance of Anglo-Italian disharmony. Take the repeated ‘o’ sounds which imply both Dowling’s charm – her ...”

“... Peter Hennessy’s new book hasn’t persuaded me that its central preoccupation, the current dispute over prime ministerial power and its extent, is not sterile and, indeed, rather boring – yet it is a splendid read. The truth is that the Westminster system is quite inadequately democratic and transparent, and Hennessy is, if anything, too respectful and conventional in his proposals about how the office might be reformed ...”

“... shabby uniform. (Gustav died when I was four and he was ninety: he had every tooth in his head, white and without cavities – thanks, it was said, to his diet of harsh rye bread and raw garlic.) My great-grandmother Maria holds the bibbed baby Erich; Aunt Lenchen, whom I never met, is beside her. Maria’s ears stick out at right angles to her head, as do ...”

“... engineering for contemporary architecture (Rogers and Piano were assisted by the great engineer Peter Rice, who often consulted for RRP thereafter). Second, it offered one response to the open question of what post-industrial design might look like (‘most of us want it to look like something,’ Reyner Banham once remarked; ‘we don’t want form to ...”

“... testimony, power seldom looks alluring. The distended egos of New Labour grandees such as Peter Mandelson, and especially Prescott, float by from time to time, gas-filled blimps at risk of collision or spontaneous combustion. Mandy, prickly, imperious and unloved, falls, twice. Gordon Brown schemes to become leader, while his faction intrigues against ...”

“... that the text disappeared beneath the interpretation.’By contrast, the great merit of Peter McPhee’s new synthesis is the weight it gives to the earthy, even mundane, aspects of revolutionary experience. It examines 1789 from the peripheries, rather than Paris, as seen through the eyes of the menu peuple, rather than from the heights of the ...”

“... alliances, Fit an apartment for your eastern hostage, extol in basalt Your father, praise with white festoons the goddess your lady; And for your death which will be mine prepare An encasement as if of solid blood.Whether or not such buildings and monuments end up being commissioned and built, the speaker is able to present his identity and art as ...”

“... enjoyed as an escape from the city), but immediately sees across the valley a woman dressed in white. Of course, it is the countess herself. He begs forgiveness for his wild behaviour at the ball, and she grants it. Félix is smitten, and she is clearly attracted to him, but the love affair that follows never goes beyond the kissing of her hand. Madame de ...”

“... advised along those lines by his national defence procurement officer, an old friend called Peter Levene whom Heseltine had promoted to high office, in controversial circumstances, at a starting salary of £95,000 a year. Levene had been chairman of United Scientific Holdings, whose recent success had been based to a large degree on the cooperation of ...”

“... understand quickly that Tokyo Year Zero concerns a real-life serial killer, as notorious there as Peter Sutcliffe here, but to non-Japanese, the novel seems to introduce us to a conventionally anti-heroic modern fictional detective, hunting a murderer of young women. Will the policeman track him down before he kills again? Stepping out in the over-eager ...”

“... reading matter, the titles she was happy to display. Alan Bennett’s Diaries and, of course, Peter Ackroyd’s gold-brick biography of Blake. Bennett, Ackroyd and Jonathan Miller – these were the figures who mattered most. The Christmas parcels of English literature. Enough of threadbare bohemia, paranoid narcissism, chemical tourism through the Third ...”

“... of Pushkin’s poems, has also been daring enough to include in his novel Ararat (successor to The White Hotel) a verse ‘continuation’ of this story. He has the soldier and the philosopher submit successively to the eunuch’s blade as they leave the queen’s chamber in the morning. The youth, however, drugs the queen, slays the eunuch and departs in ...”

“... on the subject. A volume did appear in 1988 – English Extremists, written with Deyan Sudjic and Peter Cook, celebrating the postmodern architects Campbell Zogolovitch Wilson Gough – but since then his medium has been television. Meades has never been a fully paid-up architectural correspondent; he argues in Museum without Walls that taking up such a job ...”

“... of public betterment’ and guided by ‘valiant ideas of freedom and democracy’. The journalist Peter Apps credits it with preventing the end of the world and allowing ‘whole generations’ to ‘grow up largely in peace’. In its own promotional material Nato claims to have ‘kept over one billion people safe for 75 years’. It has suddenly become ...”