“... and articles, why is Steinbeck the subject of only fifteen or twenty?’ That is the question. Few self-respecting writers cite Steinbeck as an influence; even those critics who admit to once having had a soft spot for his work attribute it to the unformed tastes of adolescence. One grows out of him, like acne. The small band of writers who do admire Steinbeck ...”

“... she got on well with Mrs Pattison, who tolerated her husband’s little ways with martyred and self-regarding composure. Meta and Pattison met where they could: in London, walking in Kensington Gardens; at friends’ houses; for an occasional week at the Lodgings when the Rector’s wife was away and one of his nieces or another young friend could act as ...”

“... in which it is likely to become persuasive without anything more being done. This effortless self-authentication is exactly expressed by Berkeley’s irresistibly lucid prose: it seems as if the decisive move was made before he put pen to paper. John Austin borrowed a phrase from Aristotle’s Poetics to describe this effect: ‘events outside the ...”

“... abilities are in the mundane chores, while yours are in a higher, wider sphere,’ he says self-abasingly. What are we to make of a novel purporting to be a study of duality and neurosis, which contains so much preposterous nonsense? The Bay of Silence with its deadly-earnest tone and made-up grotesquerie, can only strike one as being altogether too ...”

“... stood sternly erect, holding onto their reins in the stance of Greek charioteers. Their proud, self-confident bearing showed that they already felt themselves the rulers of Malaga. Yet no one, however closely associated with the Right, was molested. The workers, when their day came, did not intend to injure their class enemies. All men were to be ...”

“... qualities, mixed in whatever proportions, that all cartoonists must possess. Fourth, his courage, self-confidence, cheek – this surely was the attribute that gave Low his special quality. Fifth, his ability to darken his tone, often literally, to measure up to the epic themes of war. These gifts were magnified by his professional longevity. Low tends to be ...”

“... is wooden and inert, yet the author’s verbal competence outstrips his dramatic skill. Flat, self-explicating characterisation of the kind Shakespeare nowhere commits, except for particular, framed effects, is standard. Though a few exchanges are terse and stichomythic, most drag painfully, while the villain’s soliloquies are soporific. As for the ...”

“... Inevitably, therefore, this review is in part autobiographical: it is a debate with a past self. Any discussion of the value of dialectics in biology must take in Lysenkoism, and it might as well start there. Lysenko is the millstone round the neck of the dialectical biologist. The acceptance of his views, under Party pressure, caused Russian biology ...”

“... figure in ‘Jimmy and the Desperate Woman’, for example, who is so fascinated by the dourly self-sufficient miner’s wife yet so unable to match her kind of integrity. Rico the painter in ‘St Mawr’, fraught with panic and a fear of animality beneath his fashionable cool. The successful writer in ‘Two Blue Birds’ who toys with his secretary’s ...”

“... without clever philosophical or psychological digressions. Florey might have made some amusedly self-depreciatory remark about the use of the word ‘great’, but if he had done so he would have been – as he seldom was ...”

“... of sexual enlightenment being confused with an unnatural and immature promiscuity of display and self-expression, which always leaves behind a stale depression of spirits. The public will be grateful to lose some of its freedom and to be protected from the prigs of public enlightenment (‘Anything goes anywhere’), no less than from the prigs of literary ...”

“... Council novel’ by an Englishman, if he knew enough. One remarkable feature is Anita Desai’s self-confidence and plausibility when dealing with males and their dealings with one another while no woman is present: in this she resembles the more hard-hearted Patricia Highsmith. It is not until page 58 that a woman appears – and then she is presented as a ...”

“... a homely ‘Welcome’ mat outside), offered refreshment and asked to put our valuables into self-addressed envelopes – as if we were arrested men at a London police station. I guessed correctly that this meant we would be going past metal detectors, guarding against assassins. Eventually we were seated in a great hall, some three hundred of us, and ...”

“... out into the future; apart from Ved, of course, whose eyes are turned down. (When he became self-conscious in adolescence he worried about whether they were open or shut.) Mrs Mehta peers into the future too, but she looks apprehensive. The boys are neatly dressed in tweed jackets, collars and ties. The girls, however, are in saris, except for little ...”

“... is that they are both inclined to argue that pastoralist economies are never autonomous and self-contained. In practice, pastoral economies and agricultural economies are nearly always interdigitated. But it seems that Marxist ideology requires Khazanov to treat ownership as a unitary concept. Resources are either owned collectively or they are owned ...”