“... field for comedy. Naipaul’s assessment of his own books as he writes them (‘Major. Major’) may or may not be shared by posterity, but as in the mid to late 18th century (pre-Lyrical Ballads) we live in a literary age when the Lives of the Poets are more interesting than the poetry. Theroux might not be a ...”

“... a ‘module’ and knows what ‘long-chain monomers’ smell like. Prose-nerds, in other words, may feel neglected. Still, a lot of this stuff can be put down to observational exuberance, which gives the novel its distinctive, collage-like texture. Gibson knows that using an Internet chatroom feels ‘like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with ...”

“... than a fish-platter, and which defined the iconography of the Grail ever after. The shift may have been helped by phonetic ambiguities: the saint graal, ‘Sankgreall’ in Sir Thomas Malory’s spelling, the ‘holy vessel’, leached into the sang réal, ‘royal blood’. The Holy Grail was the vessel that had preserved the Holy ...”

“... the occasion as I recall it, the drab light and huddled aspect of the shoe shop, suggest that this may be one of those false memories you hear so much about, conjured up to match the dismal mood of the event. The old man who owned the place, unshaven, bent, gruff and wheezing – the Victorian workhouse vision just won’t go back in its box – inspected the ...”

“... not left bereft, you know.’ And the conclusion is strangely upbeat: the future may be frightening for Fr Leahy, but only as it once was for those early Christian monks who rowed away into the unknown. All Trevor’s narrative gifts are evident in this story. The short paragraphs, cut and chiselled, are those of a puritan stylist. Vital ...”

“... Writing a love letter to the profession, rather than the subject matter, of literary study may well be the most daring and original aspect of the book. Many literature professors have declared their undying love for reading and teaching, but few have admitted to loving the academic game itself. More typically, they view joining the profession as the ...”

“... whose fate reflects ... the problem of evil’. The facts of the case are clearly set out: On 28 May 1995 ... Sinedu Tadesse, a 20-year-old junior from Ethiopia, murdered her room-mate, Trang Phuong Ho, an immigrant from Vietnam. The girls had lived together for two years, but during the spring of their junior year Trang had decided not to live with Sinedu ...”

“... logo of the Pebble Beach Company. As such, the use of the tree’s image is regulated by law. It may not be photographed or reproduced for any commercial purpose.” ’ This dismaying parable epitomises Coates’s chief contention, that nature itself is something we rarely encounter now. What we pass through, and plough or chop down, and photograph or paint ...”

“... has, as it were, tarnished the metal. Central banks are selling into extremely nervous markets. It may well be that in the words of a memorandum commissioned by Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925, gold reserves and a gold standard are ‘survivals of rudimentary and transitional stages in the evolution of finance and ...”

“... The place has not yet been ‘spoilt’. It remains pungently itself. For the average Harari this may be less of a good thing: a sense of stagnation and lassitude are the reverse of this coin. It is a fairly general rule that the picturesque is based on someone else’s inconvenience. Harar is a walled city, self-contained. Though you are no longer required ...”

“... Max Hastings and Paul Dacre and John Witherow and Alan Rusbridger behave like this. Dominic Lawson may well have said to Charles Moore in some gentleman’s outfitters what Sharon says to Georgina: ‘Well, we can’t both buy this, can we, babe? And I know who looks best in it.’ Both women, you see, are competing for the attention of Douglas Holloway, the ...”

“... he wanted us, and wanted us to be happy!’); University, the Idea of the (‘The idea that there may be a ravishing beauty in simply knowing – or better still, finding out – that Dr Donne’s horti conclusi and fons signati are from the Song of Songs is about as acceptable now as pederasty’); Septum, the Nasal (‘For countless millennia, the humble ...”

“... them teenagers – advising multinational corporations have little doubt that what is big in Japan may well soon be big over here, too, at least among teens and pre-teens, who spend the most money on consumer knick-knacks. It is remarkable that throughout Japan’s recent economic decline, one of its biggest exports has been something rather less tangible than ...”

“... was enjoying that temporary high the male feels when his muscles, no matter what size they may be, are gorged with blood. He feels … more of a man.’ This is it: the endless struggle for tumescence. Often, with Wolfe, the sheer butch outrageousness of the execution is a sort of pleasure in itself. In one of the few scenes from Charlotte Simmons that ...”

“... The Duke of Wellington may have defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, but it was English surgeons who finally cut the French emperor down to size. After his death on St Helena in May 1821, an autopsy was hastily arranged in order to quash claims that he had died from neglect ...”