“... suggests that ‘indifference and bafflement are today more common than hostility,’ and that may be so. But there has been some excellent work done on Pound recently: Richard Sieburth’s Instigations, Leon Surette’s A Light from Eleusis, and now Alexander’s manageably-sized study of the whole corpus of the poetry, and Woodward’s of The Pisan ...”

“... set out a direction for the world and its peoples. Given​ the power of the east-west axis, it may seem surprising that the eastward orientation of the world was ever displaced, yet it was, on maps at least. Brotton identifies a number of reasons north became primus inter pares of the four cardinal directions. It starts with Greco-Roman culture, in ...”

“... and dying, common to us all, could suddenly be overcome. Today, bringing an artist back to life may well be a promoter’s most lucrative opportunity. The artist’s bones might be deep in Forest Lawn, but the audience expects and will pay for his presence. Michael Jackson Live? It’s a no-brainer, securing the singer a kind of higher existence – a ...”

“... This recasting of the Reformation is followed by a novel slant on the Enlightenment: Kant may have dared us all to use our reason, but took an unenlightened view of sexual desire, maintaining that all sex was debasing and likening masturbation to suicide. More encouragingly, this book also contains a great deal of love and subversion. In the 12th ...”

“... bliss, mindlessness, abjection, release,’ Veronica says of Ada, her grandmother, and a man Ada may or may not have had sex with. Anything can be done, or undone: ‘There is something immoral about the mind’s eye.’ Carmel is aware her memory contains gaps, that it can correct reality or be corrected. What she ...”

“... individuals have any particular feeling for their own offspring. Chicks are fed fairly. All this may seem strange, but it reflects sophisticated evolutionary interplay. C0-operative breeding allows for more consistent protection of nests, reducing predation, and increases the resources chicks have access to, vastly improving chances of fledgling ...”

“... to be a good thing, or justified, that the person should suffer this fate.’ In other words, we may not think, ‘He got what was coming to him!’ but only: ‘I’m not sorry.’ This is a fine line, but in Scanlon’s view it has practical consequences. He holds that permissible alterations of feeling do not justify imposing suffering on the wrongdoer ...”

“... could break as well as make alliances. Village holidays and male fellowship in the alehouse may have provided an opportunity to affirm ties despite differences in wealth. And as more formal associational life grew over the course of the 18th century, new affiliations, such as friendly societies, gradually created social bonds that enabled a different ...”

“... Madox Ford’ and William Carlos Williams’s ‘To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven’. And you may say that his luck holds: for Robert Green is also an admirer, but his book is thoroughly sensible, unbedazzled and discriminating, the book of someone who has heard of other writers and is in no kind of ‘Special relationship’ to Ford. What he has set out ...”

“... It will be seen that these horrible facts are absolutely fundamentally unacceptable. They may win their authors a Nobel Prize, but those who discuss the mind know that something is seriously wrong. Sperry reappears on the scene to make matters worse. In a series of experiments, he examined the apparent mosaic representation of the world in a ...”

“... States; even in Latin America and Japan his reputation later ‘crested’, and any tears he may have shed over the criticism of Trevor-Roper and Pieter Geyl must have been quickly dried. The completion of his Study of History and his retirement from Chatham House made no difference to his literary activity, and until his death in 1975 books and articles ...”

“... Moonies brainwash them, I am told, into hating their parents and families. Other Californian cults may do the same. The British Conservative Party is a long way from California, and it is still some way from being a cult: yet in recent years odd things have been happening to the Conservative Party. Conservatives have been asked to believe that virtually ...”

“... 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 ...”