“... the Times, and nothing was ever printed which he thought unfair. He hints strongly that matters may not have been quite so squeaky-clean since he ceased to be editor, and even expresses a few doubts (more of this anon) about the way things are now going. But the idea that he and ‘Rupe’ started the slide towards perdition is dismissed as the jealousy of ...”

“... that he has brought the devils to Loudun, at least metaphorically, in rousing passions which he may not share but which he is pleased to have roused. But he hasn’t. He is not a sorcerer, only a man not trying to be an angel, and it is this acknowledgement which allows him to suffer and die with impeccable courage, accepting none of the charges against him ...”

“... Jarrell set it out like this at the end of his essay on Stevens: ‘A man who is a good poet at 40 may turn out to be a good poet at 60; but he is more likely to have stopped writing poems, to be doing exercises in his own manner, or to have reverted to whatever commonplaces were popular when he was young. A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of ...”

“... to say the least – especially since the Blake of the Visions of the Daughters of Albion may justifiably be claimed as a sister to Mary Wollstonecraft in the struggle to vindicate the rights of woman. And, most alarmingly in a book that advertises itself as a guide to the poetry as well as the life, it completely misses the point of the poem, which ...”

“... economies’. ‘The magic of the price system gets thousands of people to co-operate so that we may buy a pencil for a trifling sum.’ It was calculated in the 1950s that it would cost a do-it-yourself addict about fifty dollars to make a single wood-cased pencil. As late as 1771, at the beginning of the decade of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and of James ...”

“... the career of Saddam Hussein and the blunders of the Western countries which armed him, but they may have difficulty analysing the long-term effects of the invasion of Kuwait on 2 August on the Arab Gulf states. The ruling families seem no more inclined than before to open the door to real democratisation, whatever the pressures from their domestic critics ...”

“... that what Colombia needs is not new laws but the will to apply them. There are signs that the will may be developing. Extensive frauds have been uncovered in the social security system, and in the public services of Colombia’s main port, Barranquilla. The newspapers are exposing corruption with more determination than they have shown for a long time. Even ...”

“... fact, the people on whom this sort of thing is most unfair are the top executive directors. They may benefit from stock options, but they are not as a rule major shareholders. Their careers are likely to suffer whether they stay or leave, since if they stay they risk finding themselves taking orders from people they neither like nor, more ...”

“... the United Nations as it attempts to bring peace to the country and to prepare for elections by May next year. The key to success is not the questionable commitment of the outside world to the democratisation of Cambodia, however worthy the efforts of the UN and the hundred or so charities already working there, but the determination – also questionable ...”

“... villain Guido, allows his thoughts to stray to the supper which he hopes to be eating that night. May Gigia have remembered, nothing stings Fried liver out of its monotony Of richness like a root of fennel, chopped Fine with the parsley. Like Crusoe’s footprint, the lawyer’s liver is the kind of fact which enriches narrative and makes for the ...”

“... of writers; whose work is, above all, thoroughly (and enviably) internationalised, this may be because we have so far lacked a really distinguished English entry in the field. We have been dogged, perhaps, by an assumption that English history and the English landscape do not in themselves offer a broad enough canvas (rather in the way that whole ...”

“... nearly fifty years writing this book, and died before this final edition appeared. Whatever one may think of the result, the author’s dedication is awe-inspiring. Bolloten went to Spain during the Civil War as correspondent of the United Press. He began collecting newspapers, propaganda hand-outs, leaflets, booklets. As he admits, he was at that time ...”

“... and advertisements for financial services. Even building societies have had to accept that they may hold mortgages. But there is still some exclusion of women’s activities from public acknowledgment. A woman who cares for other people’s children contributes to ‘national income’; one who cares for her own does not. When a man marries his housekeeper ...”

“... but after the Revolution Locke faded from sight across the Channel. At home, however his fortunes may have gone up or down, the topics that he discussed came to constitute philosophy. Locke was no sceptic, in the philosopher’s sense of that word, but he surely was sceptical. English-language philosophy has been sceptical ever since. Locke set the ...”

“... The logic of the dissolution will be the appearance of separate armies: and these armies may not just be separate, but warring. Already, Armenia and Azerbaijan are essentially at war, and neighbouring Turkey has protested about the creation of two national armies out of local units of the former Soviet Army. Conflict is now likely throughout the ...”