“... the future tank became a naval project. Swinton did not learn of this development until late in May, but Churchill had made considerable progress in the meantime. A new Landships Committee was to be chaired by Tennyson d’Eyncourt, a submarine expert. Its secretary was Albert Stern, a banker in civilian life. By the end of summer there was general ...”

“... baseball team, and part of Ansett airlines until it went broke, and the US TV Guide. Some of us may be aware that he owns 70 per cent of Australia’s newspaper industry, and one of its main television channels. He is the unmoved mover behind The Simpsons, That 70s Show, Married with Children, Fight Club, The Full Monty, Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire ...”

“... its grip, Updike gathered rosebuds wherever he lay. In letters to girlfriends, he rues that he may have fallen short (‘Will I ever be able to suck hard enough to please you?’), giving fine expression to Benjamin Franklin’s American credo of continual self-improvement, but post-coital tristesse and agenbites of inwit are rare. ‘And how nicely you ...”

“... except for the very occasional corner or patch of wall, where a mysterious heap of personal trash may be piled up. Every morning, early, a small white cleaning truck comes along with its revolving brushes, pausing by a diminutive metal trash bag holder for the crew to remove and replace the suspended trash bag. Supplementing this vehicle are individual men in ...”

“... Auden responded to the spectacle of Tennyson’s infantile genius with peculiar emphasis then that may have been because he felt similarly charged. ‘Must hear in silence till I turn my toes up,/“It’s such a pity Wystan never grows up,”’ he complained in his ‘Letter to Lord Byron’. Leavis wasn’t the only one who thought this way about Auden, but ...”

“... edge of the Pacific Rim.) The cooking revolution in France was fuelled by the évènements of May 1968 and it shared the anti-authoritarianism of student radicalism, rebelling against the idea of doing things ‘by the book’. Yet, as Steinberger notes, while the student radicals were trying to bring about revolution from the outside, nouvelle cuisine ...”

“... but he is stronger on narrative than on analysis, and I don’t think he really brings out what may be lurking in the mephitic swamp that he explores so well. Perhaps we might approach it by tracing two related but not interdependent trends: the rise of the mass media at the end of the 19th century and the decline of Parliament through the second half of ...”

“... have new voices issued to them, voices that stray so far from any previous conversation they may as well be talking in tongues. The details of that evening are a blur, not just because it was a long time ago but because it was a blur at the time. I was in shock. Dad was in shock, of course, but I was in shock too, from having administered one and also ...”

“... at this (or any other) time,’ Burton notes. Marian had a remittance from her family; Bunting may have been helped by his mother (who joined them in Rapallo periodically; his father was dead); I don’t think there was much paid work involved. Bunting advances the perverse and implausible claim: ‘It seems as though Italy were the only climate in which I ...”

“... now for having once happened to someone else elsewhere? … It is my story now, not his.’ This may not be an odd way to feel, though it probably is, but it’s definitely an odd way to introduce a personal narrative. By this point there hasn’t been enough of a story for it to be claimed by anyone in particular. The reunion between narrator and aunt, for ...”

“... in which money can be safely lent are not many, and a clear-headed, quiet, industrious person may soon learn all that is necessary about them’ – advice which might have forestalled half a dozen bank crashes. Bagehot goes on elsewhere to give three warnings to investors, which pretty much exhaust the subject: ‘Have nothing to do with anything unless ...”

“... of Book of Numbers) has no philosophically enforceable link with the author, however much they may seem to coincide biographically. In Roth’s book the doubling brought themes of identity and reliability into play, while here it’s a mechanism (providing, in fact, the basic impetus of the plot) for bringing into contact two unrelated worlds, even two ...”

“... that it hadn’t. Now George Osborne is promising, should the Tories win the election in May, to put the country through the same painful and unnecessary process all over again. Why? Why did the government take decisions that were bound to put the recovery at risk, when those decisions weren’t required even according to its own rules? How did a ...”

“... was to be uniquely human. The worst worry is that the machines will refuse our orders, that they may acquire a will of their own, and want free agency. You start out with some matter-of-fact presumptions about what each sort of entity really is. If you’re reading this piece, you’re almost certainly a person, and you assume that its other readers are ...”

“... themselves out of business: why go off to live at the edge of a pond, like Thoreau, when you may as well explore the relation of human sociability to nature over a book on the subject, or a lavish transformation of raw into cooked? (It’s also noticeable that nature writing hasn’t caught on there as it has in the UK: in France writing is still first ...”