“... frequently implied than invoked. The preferred manner is that of indirection. While Mr Sparrow may delight in a guise of bluff, non-specialist plain-speaking, there is irony in his soul. His most unguarded admissions of belief are often found in parentheses, just as his most joyful attacks may be confined to ...”

“... is that of a struggle for the virtues. The point of a virtue is not the applause that it may bring or the advantages which may be drawn from its appearance, but the irreproachably selfish and earthly reward of having lived a life to be proud of in the community to which one belongs. Modern moral philosophy is at ...”

“... in the records of ‘dead’ or unsolved crimes, miscellaneous fragments of patterns that may never discover their true forms or implications. The materials on which he works establish a ghastly penumbra of family tensions and physical and emotional violence as a significant backdrop to his own life. At home he treats his wife and two boys with a ...”

“... took a liking to him, and he – like millions of others – was conquered by Churchill. It may have been galling for Colville to listen while Brendan Bracken or Mary Churchill heaped abuse on his former master. But as he was a charming and diplomatic young man, with malice towards none, he tried to think the best of everyone and usually succeeded. The ...”

“... them to the Mafia’s bugging of her home. Bobby was there the day she took her last overdose, and may even have called the ambulance which took her still alive to hospital and then back dead to her bed. Key police evidence was destroyed. Thanks to the aperient action of this book, a public inquiry is once again a possibility. Norma Jeane opens movingly with ...”

“... meet Hittites these days in European cities. Gilman implicitly makes the point that self-hatred may be, among other things, a kind of self-protection, part of the emotional rigmarole of survival in largely hostile countries. The history of the Jews, as of any dispersed people, has been the history of their obvious, and not so obvious, difference from the ...”

“... as Joyce’, but – well – he is much more slippery; the reader falls through crevices which may or not have been deliberately left in the structure. The structure is in any case unsound: like Stead’s (and Banville’s and Barker’s to boot), its feature is doubleness or gemination – here duplicity is another formal option. The narrators are ...”

“... Goethe, Mann, Stendhal and Balzac in official literature and that, observes Vizinczey, ‘may yet have significant consequences for the future’. It is as if the very strength of his idealism – about political freedom and the power of literature – drives him to see the most practical aspect of the argument. Furthermore, it permits him to express ...”

“... the Conservative Party. Promotion is what matters to most new Conservative MPs – though this may be fuelled less by personal ambition than by the expectations of local Conservative Associations. When I was first elected, in the early Sixties, there was a phalanx of knights of the shire who did not hanker to become junior ministers, but who knew the ...”

“... and Cockie Blixen, Bror’s second wife, on safari’. Who are Tommy and Cockie? The moviegoer may remember that the Baroness’s husband was called ‘Bror’. He is mentioned only twice in the book, unnamed: ‘When the war broke out, my husband and the two Swedish assistants on the farm volunteered and went down to the German border ... My husband wrote ...”

“... There could hardly be a more striking contrast with Pushkin’s characters. Onegin and his Tatyana may not have been great readers, but they were steeped in a well-defined cultural and literary tradition stretching from Richardson to Rousseau and Byron. They tended to re-enact the romantic roles that their contemporaries had become so excited about. In The ...”

“... novelist’s ear, possibly what was known when I was a boy as a pack of lies. Not only the cynical may find it remarkable how these writers, so dull at home, become so fascinating abroad, so easily embroiled in sexual intrigues, backwoods vendettas, dangerous adventures, so readily adopted by crazed millionaires, whimsical bandits, insatiable madams of ...”

“... other combinations. It was a new force in the making, only to be blasted by the peace. To us, it may be axiomatic that the wartime collaboration of classes and parties was a forced marriage, doomed to dissolve after the armistice. But, Dr Morgan replies, this was not how the world appeared at the time. Bonar Law, for example, seemed to wash his hands of ...”

“... of a palpable untruth about her dying husband be described facetiously as rushing into battle? One may also note as significant the misnaming of the article in question, which was actually reprinted as ‘The Orthodoxy of Enlightenment’ (the ‘collection’ was Anna Karenina and other Essays). Most dubious, however, is Morpurgo’s handling of ...”

“... two contradict each other; while DeLloyd Guth’s account of the transition from debt to contract may well be profound but is so obscurely written that it’s hard to be sure. Between the more extreme elements, however, are a group of essays that display solid merit and, in one or two cases, real distinction. Rudolf Heinze’s study of proclamations shows ...”