“... offer an opinion, but in The Warrior he quotes a former Wimbledon semi-finalist, the US player John Isner, who says that Nadal is ‘the greatest competitor in any sport in the history of the world’. In a field stratified by the hard evidence of rankings and results, how can value judgments be so hard to prove? There’s broad consensus about the ...”

“... an actor explore a part and bring greater depth and resonance to it. Trimble and his deputy, John Taylor, are redefining Unionism, and the redefinition is there in the News Letter editorial’s ‘new-sprung modern light’, as Edmund Burke would put it. Something is flying off and out of the caked nest, and it’s not crying ‘yarr yarr yarr’. The ...”

“... and competing political tendencies; between little Englanders (such as Richard Cobden and John Bright) on the one hand and chauvinist imperialists (such as Lord Palmerston and Joseph Chamberlain) on the other; between a maritime and peaceful trading nation and a military-imperial superpower; between a petit-bourgeois electorate, fired by the ...”

“... as orders for ‘the next Górecki’ were heard in the boardrooms, the ever-striking figure of John Tavener emerged once again from his meditations, and the ‘buy British’ campaigners set to work. His Apocalypse was yet to come; and when it did (in August at the Albert Hall), Union Jacks were unfurled in the national ...”

“... Mary Patterson, married Lewis Sheridan Leary in 1858. The following year, Leary was recruited by John Brown for his suicidal raid on Harpers Ferry, and the bullet-riddled shawl that was eventually returned to Mary was in due course used as a blanket for the infant Langston (a middle name – he was baptised James, after his father). Mary’s next ...”

“... pictures do not commemorate great thoughts or deeds, or render nature in the poetry of landscape, hall, or hut, but are of one voluptuous cast – mere shows of form and colour – and no more? Is it that the books have all their gold outside, and that the titles of the greater part qualify them to be companions of the prints and pictures? Is it that the ...”

“... There’s no question that O’Connor was doing the latter. Gooch reports that when the poet John Crowe Ransom selected one of her stories to read aloud in Iowa, he substituted the word ‘negro’ for the slur. O’Connor complained that he’d ruined the story. ‘The people I was writing about would never use any other word.’That O’Connor had a ...”

“... a bit of a kid in person, too. Adam Roberts thoughtfully includes among his appendices a memoir by John Addington Symonds in which he records the impression of something ‘almost childish’ about Tennyson’s metaphysical opinions, and you can see what he means: ‘I do not know whether to think the universe great or little,’ he records the great man ...”

“... and ‘uncle’. Students are from poor, often indigenous families. One student cited by John Gibler in his valuable oral history of the massacre, said that ‘we don’t have any other options for study or pursuing a career, my small town is a bit more fucked-over than other places. I decided to come to this school, to study, to be ...”

“... The Relation Ship, was published by his own Goliard Press in 1967. Three illustrations by Barry Hall. ‘Off-set printed, then blind-embossed and hand-coloured by the artist’. Four hundred and fifty copies hard-bound. ‘Ivory-tinted Glastonbury antique-laid paper’. Hairy boards (like one of Sonny Bono’s Flintstone-style waistcoats) and a tissue ...”

“... this: In 1818, a different diary was published: Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, trumpeted as an eyewitness account of life at the court of Charles II. It was often less than thrilling – ‘21 June, 1653. My Lady Gerrard, and one Esquire Knight, a very rich gentleman, living in Northamptonshire, visited me’; ‘23 ...”

“... seen him, in the tweed sports jacket of a young academic, performing, sober, at the famous Albert Hall ‘Wholly Communion’ readings on 11 June 1965. I’d watched the Peter Whitehead video. American poets in those days, with their crisper sense of history and occasion, wore suits and ties. I’d read the free-wheeling interviews in fugitive magazines, such ...”

“... Cherie instantly picked up on, is that Brown would never have said what he said in the conference hall if he had been free to speak his mind. It is impossible to imagine Gordon Brown in a private setting, surrounded by his intimates and his acolytes, using the word ‘privilege’ to describe his relationship with the prime minister. Compare this with what ...”

“... and fumed at a ‘smart-alecky’ review of some avant-garde magazines, deciding it was written by John Willett (its real author was in fact his near-namesake Ian Hamilton, never the warmest admirer of the Scottish avant-garde). He felt too good for the Scottish papers and too isolated for the English ones, though when visitors beat a path to his door they ...”

“... had one child, a daughter. So he’s a curious – you could almost say implausible – mix of John McCain and Bill Clinton, though a few decades younger than either of them. According to the conventions of stories about fictional presidents, the novel strives to maintain the appearance of bipartisanship; Duncan never tells us which party he belongs ...”