“... it would mean fifty sextillion or so planets in the observable universe where intelligent life may have evolved. The chances of Earth being the only one to have realised that potential seem ridiculously small. It’s safe to assume we’re not alone.That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that the chances of intelligent life developing on Earth were ...”

“... she felt Thomas had become ‘vain’ in his learning. It was clearly a damaging thing to do, and may have contributed to de Quincey’s opting, in his mature prose style, for the florid sentence, as a kind of revenge for the interruption of his linguistic training. Thomas was henceforth cast from tutor to tutor, and his only consolation was that he had made ...”

“... the morning. The youth, however, drugs the queen, slays the eunuch and departs in triumph. Thomas may have his own esoteric reasons for arranging this dénouement, but on the face of it nothing could better illustrate Pushkin’s implicit contrast between banality of theme and banality of treatment. No situation can be too banal to provoke and intrigue the ...”

“... into the dementia that swallowed him for the last five years of his life, was his own epitaph. In May 1740 he made his will, fastidiously apportioning his property and specifying arrangements for his interment. He stipulated that he be buried ‘as privately as possible, and at Twelve o’clock at Night’ in the great aisle of Dublin’s St Patrick’s ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... moment in the 18th century when Anglo-French relations reached their lowest point was probably 29 May 1794 – 10 Prairial, Year II, as the French then styled it. On that day, the Jacobin Bertrand Barère delivered a typically long-winded and overheated speech to France’s National Convention on his favourite subject, English perfidy. He accused English ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... will they. So all they can do is to rally behind the man Yeltsin nominates as his successor, who may or may not be Stepashin, and hope that the same tide of money and media manipulation which returned Yeltsin for his second term in 1996 will carry a man whom few know or care about, and wash him into the Kremlin. Except for ...”

“... over their clever and dutiful sons. This is often a hope, however unwitting, that the son may not resemble the father. Seepersad Naipaul, who had published his stories privately, writes several times to his son that he believes the son will become a great writer; for himself, all he hopes is that he might one day be reputably published by an English ...”

“... the little bit of dry wood melted to dust. Disappointed, I clutched the two bronze teeth, which may survive somewhere in a drawer in my parents’ cottage a few miles away in Narin. Another day when we were out in that scooped windblown dune, a friend of my mother’s uncovered a beautiful bronze pin with a little circle at the top. Being a good Southern ...”

“... Honan’s answer to all these questions, rather disappointingly, is yes and no. However he may disparage the format of the merely documentary life, his confidence seems to fail him when the gaps in the written record leave him with only his own conjectures to fall back on. Far from arguing for a single vision of William Shakespeare consistent with all ...”