“... who can see, and God knows Cobb doesn’t go about with his eyes shut, a first-class funeral may often be tragic, but it is also much better than a family dinner: it is a kind of photographic developer and fixer of the life of the notables. Especially in the department of the Nord: in Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing this sad ceremony was the connecting link in ...”

“... Greene’s biographers (Norman Sherry) dates this attempt to July 1924; a more recent biographer (Richard Greene) writes: ‘By Christmas 1923, after a total of six plays, he gave up Russian roulette.’ A poem Greene wrote about it, ‘The Gamble’ (‘I slip a charge into one chamber’), appeared in his collection Babbling April, in 1925. Another of his ...”

“... spirit left to be broken. All this we should have known long ago. Think of the career of the great Richard Topcliffe, chief ‘poursuivant’ or persecutor of Jesuit missionaries in the reign of Elizabeth I. Topcliffe is perhaps not much spoken of except by historians of the Catholic martyrs or close students of Donne, who mentioned him in passing but deleted ...”

“... R. Ford, President of the United States . . . do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offences against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August ...”

“... already inspired. The consensus of Robin Hood studies as it has emerged in the past twenty years may be summarised as follows. First, as regards the legend: the earliest reference to ‘rymes of Robyn Hood’ is in the 1377 text of Langland’s Piers Plowman. By the early 15th century, references have become relatively abundant. The earliest extant Robin ...”

“... satisfactorily described. The consumption of all kinds of book is problematic. Purchased books may not be read; books which are read may be taken or mistaken in a multitude of ways. There is no ratings system which will tell us for books, as for television, what gratifies and what does not. All we have are the crude and ...”

“... luxury [that] played to every Western European stereotype … about the decadent Orient’, as Richard Miles puts it in his impressive new history of Carthage. Pointing out that Rome’s triumph over Carthage ‘provided an attractive blueprint’ and ‘metaphor’ to justify French domination in North Africa, Miles dismisses Salammbô as ‘the most ...”

“... wit, cerebral depth and a marvellous turn of phrase. But reductionism of this sort won’t do, as Richard Bourke shows in his erudite and compelling study of Burke’s political life. Burke’s earliest works, before his engagement to the Rockingham Whigs, were concerned with fundamental questions in political philosophy and aesthetics. The Tory ...”

“... hinted at in the text, has recently been trumpeted by the journalists Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh in The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, which is largely a popularisation of Robert Eisenman’s theories. Unsurprisingly, Baigent and Leigh contribute an effusive blurb to this book. Eisenman for his part has been putting himself forward as the ...”

“... in Andrew Lang’s Crimson Fairy Book. In the new ones, however accomplished and diverting they may be, the meaning is clear but coyly hidden, as in many modern fictions; although the examples sought out by Alison Lurie have as much cunning and high spirits in them as the old tales. In Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Wife’s Tale’ (1982) it takes us a few pages ...”

“... in his disenchantment with this freedom. Little wonder, since his life, pleasingly chronicled by Richard Vanderbeets, began in St Petersburg amid aristocratic Anglo-Russian relatives whose licensed eccentricities would have spoiled anyone for Hollywood. ‘From his great carved bed’ – this was a favourite uncle at play – ‘a .22 calibre pistol in his ...”

“... at a once familiar corner. Part of it was gone. The Walgreen’s drug store where, as teenagers, Richard and I had tormented Louie, was gone, replaced by a huge, white, faceless department store, as was the jewellers where I had stood for hours desperately wanting those hideous rings with heavy red and purple stones in them. In almost every other way ...”

“... one of the most familiar scenes from the life of Wilde: the bad moment outside Swan and Edgar’s. Richard Ellmann’s biography says that, as Wilde caught sight of ‘the painted boys on the pavement’ outside the department store, he was struck by an overwhelming sense of catastrophe. Holland traces the story back to 1930 and to Ada Leverson, who – he ...”

“... popworld of Beavis and Butthead and the fortysomething editors who deify Rosanne Arnold and Richard Nixon on the same page. Editors once made yearly scouting trips up to the North Country, just to avoid getting sucked into the black hole of fad and revisionism. These trips, which took place in the spring and always in a four-wheel-drive ...”

“... explained to his mother. What he did not tell her was how he had landed such a grand invitation. Richard Ingleby cannot tell us either, but Kahn was the first of many men and women to be charmed by Wood. His good looks and ‘friendliness’, the quality that people singled out as the key to his appeal, enabled him to drift with apparent inevitability to the ...”