“... pleasure of art, the pleasure of plot. But it is also an emblem of exile: ‘The season was May – mid-May, 1940,’ Nabokov writes. ‘The day before, after months of soliciting and cursing, the emetic of a bribe had been administered to the right rat at the right office and had resulted finally in a visa de sortie ...”

“... to be safe. In principle, this does not give rise to any constitutional problems, although it may insufficiently protect human rights. European countries were deemed safe by the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004. The inclusion of Greece was considered by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords – the forerunner of the ...”

“... a putative Michelangelo sketch on which opinion is still divided. The key moment of opportunity may come when a neglected artist becomes suddenly fashionable, so that demand is high but scholarship still limited. Whoever knocked up the jaunty ‘Breughel’ A Religious Procession took advantage of the rediscovery of his work in the 1920s. The caption ...”

“... Institute of Export and International Trade. The gentleman wanted to issue ‘a clarion call, if I may’. International trade is a force for good, humanity needs it to solve its ‘issues’. MENA is young, and so the economic potential is ‘vast’.My Monday morning had begun outside the ACC campus, with the young woman who was leafleting for the Palestine ...”

“... Sissy, Carmel, Dolores, Josephine – aren’t altogether saintly, but she engages with them; she may have withdrawn from society but she’s not a recluse. It helps that she’s familiar with the bleakly beautiful Monaro landscape, having grown up nearby. She visits her parents’ graves (‘My inability to get over my parents’ deaths has been a source of ...”

“... caused by having to spend a year in Japan (Susan Choi also lived there for a period as a child) may be a factor in her recalcitrance. As the daughter of a white American mother and an Asian father, she’s used to feeling different, but in Japan it’s a new sort of difference: she’s stared at as a gaijin, a foreigner. Over the months, as she masters the ...”

“... do likewise. From nine to eight, from eight to seven, from seven to six, from six to five …One may also be accused of having ‘written upon confessional wafers and given them to sick people to eat’. And when sorcery is in the air, even cats and swine speak.The source of words is feelings. Ravn immerses us in a world in which empirical reasoning and ...”

“... a formula for ending the welfare state at a stroke. No wonder it is music to Tea Party ears (and may soon be obligatory reading in coalition circles). The demonising of taxation is a perennial of the American right, but what makes Bastiat such excellent Tea Party company is his view that any interferences by government beyond the bare Lockean minimum ...”

“... than a pointless success, you can look at The Pacific and see where ambition and technology may have bled the writing to death. Nobody is talking about this show, which could either mark a change in HBO’s fortunes, a temporary blip, or a wholesale return in our lives to reckless gossiping about who’s sleeping with whom. When I was small I thought ...”

“... the centrepiece of the exhibition Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album (at the Courtauld until 25 May).* Repetition – a wild piling of imbecility on imbecility – is part of the Goya effect. At the show, I tried the experiment of starting at page 1 and giving each sheet of the album three or four minutes, just reading the caption and staring, not turning ...”

“... black beard. The gold background from which he emerges has a lemony hue. What a presence! In the May sun, the lamassu seems gentle, his smile benign as he looks to the south. Yet I sense that for Rakowitz this gentleness has been hard won. As he conducted it, the family import/export business was a way of making peace, of keeping lines of communication ...”

“... in the future due to being deceased’, a wording that gives pause. The fate of how all this may depend on her pearls, her teeth. The fate of the sentence, ‘We are really sorry, we made a mistake,’ which Judge Dillard utters in a hypothetical context but still it’s good to hear. The fate of the government lawyer who is blonde and talks too ...”

“... Warhaft and in memory of Sasha Warhaft 1985-1988 All I can hope is that the voice of Kavadias may be heard, however faintly, from the bridge on a dark night somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Gail Holst Warhaft, translator: The Collected Poems of Nikos Kavadias 1 Tonight, as the tropic day drops its sail and flocks of marabou are flying west, I’m ...”

“... his lips. ‘Stop grieving, Telethusa,’ Isis said. ‘Ignore your husband; keep whatever child may come. You’ve been my loyal worshipper. I’m not ungrateful, and you’ll find me helpful.’ So when the baby, of its own accord, pushed its way out and proved to bed a girl, its mother told the nurse (her only partner in the fraud): ‘Take care of my ...”

“... shop on her own. She never emerges as the monster that Jeremy Seabrook often swears she is. It may be that the process of recalling his childhood projected him back into childish thoughts, though he writes in the voice of an adult trying to make sense of his past. The most casual remarks were sometimes veiled ultimatums, decisions already taken and not ...”