“... be allowed in this country.’ Lady Austin would have enjoyed Elton John’s ‘marriage’ to David Furnish last year – even the Daily Express managed to celebrate it as a ‘triumph for gay rights’ – in the Windsor Guildhall, where Charles had married Camilla only eight months before. Having arrived in the same year as the Civil Partnership ...”

“... misogynist central character, John, is as compromised and unappealing as the disgraced David Lurie. But perhaps Youth is being taken too seriously, and we are meant to mock this grim young man and the Conradian title that portentously frames his rite of passage. A good deal depends on whether we read Youth as fiction or autobiography. It was ...”

“... perspective, we are living in an ice age, because there is ice at the poles – which has by no means always been the case. Fifty-odd million years ago, not only was there no ice at the North Pole, the temperature there was 23ºC. Ten thousand years ago, at the end of the last cool snap of this current ice age – known as a ‘glacial’, to distinguish it ...”

“... simply take the seven shillings from Thomas. Not only does the law forbid it, Thomas’s wealth means he probably has the power to take it back (or worse). So without access to a court, Alice has to rely on his goodwill for her money and her surcoat. This shows the first reason to care about access to justice, by which I mean being in a position to have ...”

“... maintained’. The implication is that a real picture of the author, like the one on the front of David Cecil’s study, would not do justice to the image that Tanner has formed of her, the geist that he requires. If we have Mrs Abington in place of Jane Austen, why not a Stendhal heroine instead of Elizabeth Bennet, so that ‘by showing the different ways ...”

“... contexts. The black humour which permeates American versions of Vietnam can also function as a means of undermining the reality of the events described: the surreal looniness of it all has been rendered so often and vividly – in books such as Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers, films such as Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket – that it has become harder ...”

“... accepted a religious settlement that was Protestant, but in many ways ambiguous – and by no means as radical as some of those she appointed to run the Church would have wished. Robert Whiting’s book assesses the impact of all these changes in the parishes. His is a study of the religion of ordinary people in Devon and Cornwall. Meticulous and ...”

“... chase has been worth the quarry, yet all are agreed that both the alleged bad behaviour and the means of making it accountable are deeply symptomatic of the state into which America has got itself. The affair is not what it seems, however. It is not Presidential politics but esoteric science. The part of Bill Clinton is here played by the Nobel ...”

“... mean? By then, at the end of a ‘voyage inwards, perilously sustained with increasingly reduced means’, he was in a cruel situation – one quite distinct from, although perhaps contributing to, his poor mental and physical state. He had believed art to be serious. His paradigms of seriousness were literary and musical. He had made his play and won ...”

“... my way – complete – for the first and I fancy last time – trial a few minutes’ – which means that Bozzy picked up a prostitute in the few yards which separated his home on the Lawn-market from the law courts in Parliament House. He began to drink again, sometimes throwing things about the house when he returned; he tried to control himself (never ...”

“... French’s Bleeding Heart, Malcolm Bradbury’s Stepping Westward and Rates of Exchange, and David Lodge’s Changing Places and Small World. Now, all around the large cabin, other refugees from Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only and from Gene Wilder in The Woman in Red have their noses stuck into novels. Could it be that a certain kind of novel is being ...”

“... to others and of others to Rome, the use and role of different languages in the Roman world, the means of acquisition of Roman citizenship. No one will read it without pleasure, or without learning something new. But it remains a collection of loosely arranged material, posing no clear questions or defining in what ways the answers might ...”

“... Julie Andrews kind of nun, who might just want to rip off the wimple and sing. Stephen Burt and David Mikics’s collection of 100 sonnets through the ages is heavily weighted towards poems from the 20th and 21st centuries, and also towards some occasionally groan-worthy American poems – though perhaps hearts less jaded than mine leap up at Emma ...”

“... no longer represented. An oligarchy of aristocrats and financiers, having hijacked the Commons by means of electoral bribery and intimidation, were lining their pockets by awarding themselves government jobs, pensions, and contracts – and the newer the money, the older the corruption. Nabobs, repatriated servants of the East India Company, were buying their ...”

“... back in 1959 and first published in 1980. A comparison between the two books, Vasily’s and David’s, does not do the later one much good. As an outpouring of feeling, and as a series of sombre representations of the condition of modern Israel, To the End of the Land is often impressive, sometimes touching. As a novel it simply does not come off. This ...”