“... emotional and intellectual ground efficiently and fast. Part of the trouble with these scenes may be that Mulisch just doesn’t write the very best dialogue, but I think the real problem is inherent in the novel’s structure and the very powerful message which that structure is designed to put across. The interests of fiction have deferred here to the ...”

“... traced (e.g. Colonel Deacon, Herbert (“Hubby”) G. Wright), and have long been reported missing may have disappeared in this way.’ Clark earlier sets down a rumour from Scotland that in the Battle of Loos the Warwickshire Regiment got ‘so undisciplined’ that the Scots Guards turned their machine-guns on them. This is not confirmed in The Unknown ...”

“... date of birth and Career of each speaker: he also knows who the speaker is at any given time. It may not have been so easy for the English listener to distinguish between the half-dozen American voices used for the Trilling programme. If this mosaic didn’t come over sharply it’s a pity, since it reads like a most accomplished piece of radio. The Wilson ...”

“... at some deep level, and by reference to the future, they were all batting in the same team. One may consider a striking fact about these French writers: that their profoundest works, the works that still speak to us and can influence us – Candide, Le Neveau de Rameau, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Rousseau’s Confessions – are works of ferocious, if ...”

“... religion, of instincts rather than convictions, a governor of ordinary provinces whose inhabitants may be unhappy or yearning for change, but who eventually learn to calm down and live by the local laws. D.S. Mirsky, the Anglo-Russian critic, argued that Chekhov was popular in England because of his ‘unusually complete rejection of what we ...”

“... her siblings except George, her mentally retarded older brother. But, Tomalin thinks, the reserve may not have been breached even in the unrecorded conversations and letters, many afterwards destroyed, which passed between Jane and her closest friend, her sister Cassandra. Nokes virtually omits the novels from his story. Tomalin makes more use of them than ...”

“... provide a foot in the door of an unaccommodating Communist country. Concerns that the aid may be going astray have been dismissed by the World Food Programme, which last September claimed – falsely – that ‘food distribution is monitored by international staff to ensure it reaches the vulnerable and is not siphoned off by the military or ...”

“... archness or ambiguity’. Castle attempts to ‘Cowardise’ Hall, though allowing that ‘she may never be exactly sprightly,’ and to break down the stereotypical opposition she sees exemplified in the pair between the writings and the lives of gay men (‘worldly and facetious’) and women (‘humourless and self-involved’). She does this by tracing ...”

“... system. The elements of continuity between Italy’s early history and its more recent past may be less important, however, than the profound, but perhaps less obvious differences. It is important to remember just how thin popular participation in Italian democracy was in the 19th century. Only 2 per cent of the population was eligible to vote in the ...”

“... Terror comes, for her two great, misunderstood roles: as denouncer, and as spectator of death. She may belong to a trade which involves artistry and skill. For example, she may be a bookbinder, or polish metal for a jeweller, or be the colourist to an engraver. If this is the case, she will earn more than some men, but a man ...”

“... and lift her down again in the morning. But however demanding or at times demeaning her duties may have been, she already had, as she puts it, ‘years of good practice for the role’. When it came to tantrums, eccentricity and outrageous demands, Princess Margaret had nothing on Colin Tennant. At the heart of Glenconner’s account of her friendship with ...”

“... more than mere philosophical speculation in mind. The Enquiry was discussed by Pitt’s cabinet in May, but although the book might have been expected to encounter the full force of the law – as Paine’s similarly argued Rights of Man (1791) had done two years earlier – Godwin wasn’t prosecuted. ‘A three-guinea book could never do much harm among ...”

“... to speak was attacked by Communist Party goons and one of his friends badly injured.On 15 May 1946, a year before his death, he suffered what may have been a mild heart attack. ‘I was suddenly seized by one of those oppressive dizzy spells that have been striking me very frequently of late, and which weaken me to ...”

“... sum. The contract for Milton’s Paradise Lost in 1667 paid him two instalments of £5 and may have got his widow a further £8. The average annual income for an agricultural labourer in 1710 was a little over £17, and a solicitor at that time might earn around £113 a year. Pope published his Works in 1717, something which no English poet under ...”

“... from the Ministry of Home Safety.’ Plastic straps seem unlikely for this period, though this may be a fault of Adrian Nathan West’s translation. He could certainly have done better with the ‘Ministry of Home Safety’. Such an institution would presumably concern itself with such things as electrical insulation and the flammability of soft ...”