“... corner, are not perfect. And tyres can change their temperature during the race, as Senna’s may have done after he’d had to follow the slow-circuit car for four laps. (Schumacher noticed that the Williams hit the ground at Tamburello a moment before Senna braked. Cool tyres could have caused this.) It’s for these reasons that the electronic devices ...”

“... in the essay, yet the transitions are so vertiginous, the self-contradictions so blatant (they may of course be innate characteristics of ‘fantastic literary criticism’), that the whole seems less than a sum of the parts. At times, too, Pushkin the poet proves too protean even for Sinyavsky’s sudden changes of course. He quotes ‘The ...”

“... be disappointed if he had not also read Lucas and Koss. The presence of Koss’s monumental volume may have led Miss Brown to compress her own volume into smaller compass than she might otherwise have allowed, for Koss himself thanked her in his introduction. In a curious way, however, the books are complementary, not competitive, with Miss Brown’s far ...”

“... felicitous, and is made accessible to the reader by means of a brief but helpful introduction. One may disagree with some of his decisions: ‘intellect’, in particular, which Mr Morris offers as a translation of Geist, seems to me a worse choice than ‘spirit’, Erich Heller’s word for it in The Ironic German. Still, unlike most of Mann’s previous ...”

“... career are the ones most likely to have been written about by previous writers. Mr Mackay may aim to restore unity to his study with his subtitle: ‘Intellectual Statesman’. Balfour was certainly intellectual and probably a statesman. But was he an ‘intellectual statesman’? If so, or indeed if not, what is an intellectual statesman? No clear ...”

“... had only his new mathematical calculus and long arithmetic to do the same. Turing’s scientist may, of course, be tempted to overelaborate his model, but that has always been the weakness of the zealous theoretician. More significantly, he is bound to set up models that are easily computable, and to represent nature in terms of such models. The ...”

“... Until the 1620s there was nothing very remarkable about Richelieu’s personal assets, though 1619 may be a good date at which to begin to trace a change. In that year he became superintendent of the Queen Mother’s household. Under the umbrella of her administration, Dr Bergin tells us, a private administration of unprecedented size and scope gradually ...”

“... it would appear, although, as Martin indicates, the relations between FitzGerald and his poem may be more complex than that. He did not think of himself as a poet, though he discovered a unique way of writing a poem, a way that could never be repeated. Nor could it be improved on. FitzGerald’s endless tinkerings with his stanzas reveal that dolorous ...”

“... Children’s Hour, which deals with a similar libel suit in 1930s America. This is surprising, but may be correct. In both cases, the suit is brought against a grand old grandmother; in both a hammy actress aunt causes trouble; both feature evidence obtained by a peep through a keyhole – in a door which turns out to have no keyhole. Hellman could have read ...”

“... in word or in deed. They are doing a magnificent job, although the organisers of the experiment may well be having moral qualms about its effect in such areas as American energy policies and Soviet behaviour in Afghanistan. (Britain has presumably been the subject of a pilot experiment for the last thirty years). I find myself able to resist this hypothesis ...”

“... but for those who are interested in the nature of philosophy. Although a great man of science may have many or all of Moore’s qualities, one would not expect them to be imprinted upon his work, and if one speaks of dishonesty in science, one has something very specific and very rare in mind – the falsification of results. Yet many philosophical ...”

“... but to go around pretending he’d already joined! The blackballing was thorough and, some may have hoped, conclusive. Certainly, next time round Le Carré was back in the Circus with his moles and lamplighters. Looking back on all that disdain, Le Carré must now be enjoying an ironic chuckle. Eight or so years on, his latest novel has already been ...”

“... Air Force exercises, and meticulously planned every moment of his day. Abraham Guillen, who may be thought the main exponent of the theory of urban guerrilla warfare in Latin America – he died in 1969 – believed that it would lead to repression and dictatorships, which would then, be overthrown by an armed alliance of peasants and workers. Such an ...”

“... Maschler, but in spite of this the place is nearly always empty. Occasionally a transient figure may appear, swiftly and rather furtively, to carry off a take-away ordered earlier by telephone. Two young Indian waiters in dinner jackets hover apprehensively at the back of the room, while behind and above them, seated on a raised platform, a somewhat older ...”

“... as to where they went and what they saw or heard. By the time the Webbs returned to London in May 1912 things had greatly changed. Balfour had resigned the leadership of the Tory Party, Ireland was thought to be drifting into civil war, and the suffragettes had embarked on their campaign of violence; the outbreak of the First World War was just round the ...”