“... is chaste as a writer, and the restraint is her eroticism. But the relationship between Inez Christian Victor and a fascinating government man, Jack Lovett (these are names out of the cashmere drawer, smelling of L’Air du Temps), is heady with intimations of passion, or the rapture of fine amity. It is a book set against the great time-zone distances ...”

“... than Swift, in fact – to justify hatred, he went back to the early church. In ‘Ribh Considers Christian Love Insufficient’ (1934), the ‘old hermit’ of the title shuns love as an incomprehensible gift from God and declares: ‘I study hatred.’ Because it scours the soul, hatred now has entirely the opposite properties of those associated with it in ...”

“... new blonde, Lauren Bacall’ and concludes: About all that Howard Hawks and his writers (William Faulkner and Jules Furthman) and Bogart try to do is to set this arrogant neophyte off to the best possible advantage, to cover up her weaknesses – or turn them into assets – and to toss campstools under her whenever she wobbles. This in itself is a ...”

“... published in 1980, has an undertone of a story from the Old Testament mixed with a novel by William Faulkner. It’s a narrative of misfortune and pestilence, an account of survival in a rugged landscape against all the odds, told in a tone which is fearless, poetic, elaborate in its cadences but also, at times, sharp and precise, and at other times ...”

“... population.’ Even on her figures, she is able to make this suggestion only by discounting the Christian Arabs – a category which seems to cause her difficulty – and by confusing a majority with a plurality.How does she arrive at her figures? Her basic authority is Professor Kemal Karpat. She relies heavily on his analysis of the Ottoman census of 1893 ...”

“... out that while Hamza is an extreme Muslim fundamentalist the evangelical Ashcroft is his precise Christian equivalent, only Ashcroft wears a suit and is surrounded by young men in suits rather than disciples in jellabas and, having no hooks for hands, is the voice of respectability. 1 June. Success (like death) brings letters and I spend most of the morning ...”

“... of rock.’) The students in the audience would have had memories of the Conservative Party under William Hague, who led it to defeat in 2001; his successor, the tragi-farcical Iain Duncan Smith, who lasted until November 2003; and Michael Howard, who stayed on after losing a third general election in 2005 in order to oversee an extended leadership ...”

“... Then I realise it’s like one of the meant-to-be-over-heard soliloquies of Richmal Crompton’s William. Her outfit this morning: orange skirt, made out of three or four large dusters; a striped blue satin jacket; a green headscarf, blue eyeshield topped off by a khaki peaked cap with a skull-and-crossbones badge and Rambo across the peak. February 1989 ...”

“... criminal instincts? Was Christ the lover of Mary Magdalene, and if so, does that mean that the Christian religion is sexually split between a hidden feminine pole and a dominant masculine one?    Has France become decadent? Are you for Spinoza, Darwin, Galileo, or against? Are you partial to the United States? Wasn’t Heidegger a Nazi? Was Michel ...”

“... philosopher, have no special acuity of mind nor intellectual curiosity, and who, unlike the Christian saint, are not aflame to sacrifice themselves for love of the crucified Jesus. It is for the sake of such persons that Kant distinguished practical from pure reason, and rational religion from enthusiasm. It was for their sake that he invented the idea ...”

“... to ‘the English Literary Happy Family’, as I hope neither do I.21 March. Reading a book about William Morris and Kelmscott, I come across a reminiscence by Philip Webb, who remarked to W.R. Lethaby: ‘The best of those times was that there was no covetousness; all went into the common stock … and then we were all such boys.’ This is how I remember my ...”

“... library still displayed a relic of this chapter of American progress in the form of the scalp of William Thompson, a settler attacked during a raid in 1867, who had preserved the lopped-off sliver of his head and had it tanned for posterity.Seventeen years after the first Fort Laramie Treaty, a new version was drafted that contains hints of the legal ...”

“... Home in German Dugouts!’) I’ve got a whole shelf on war artists: C.R.W. Nevinson, Paul Nash, William Roberts, Wyndham Lewis, and the skullishly named Muirhead Bone. I’ve got books about Fabian Ware and the founding of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I’ve a 1920 Blue Guide to Belgium and the Western Front and a Michelin Somme guide from 1922 ...”

“... to which were made by the English statistician R.A. Fisher, a eugenicist and a devout Christian who saw biological progress as evidence of God’s active and continuing role in nature, and whose centenary in 1990 was not a significant media event.You could point out that Darwin would have been regarded as a very great naturalist and considerable ...”

“... social history, whose work has focused on poverty, emigration and women’s history; and William Duncan, an expert in family law at Trinity College Dublin and one of the authors of The Hague Children’s Conventions – were tasked with reporting on the way the homes were managed, ‘entrance and exit pathways’ for women and children, mortality ...”