“... of the man she falls in love with, an unidentified Arab state which the author has suggested may be Saudi Arabia. In The Pickup the sense of something terrible being about to happen is deflected onto ‘Abdu’, an illegal immigrant in South Africa who daren’t even use his proper name – Ibrahim – as he clings to his place in a country that wants to ...”

“... Rhine’ – that the song had been worth three extra divisions to the Prussian Army. Ungerer’s may well be a story on stilts. But it is one he thinks revealing of what it means to be an Alsatian. When he joined the French Army to do national service, he was put in charge of training his unit. Then he made a discovery:The French marching songs will not ...”

“... in 1991. A loss of trust in experts is the hallmark of the risk society. Whatever scientists may say, miasmas are still thought to assault and pollutants to poison. But pinning them down as allergens has not been easy. Research results have been counterintuitive. Studies of allergy incidences in the two parts of Germany soon after the fall of the Berlin ...”

“... monastery of St Andrew, and several of these were in England in Anglo-Saxon times; they may be volumes imported by the second missionary wave. Later on, Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury from 668 AD, and his colleague Hadrian, a refugee from the Arab invasions of North Africa, brought books with them possibly from the Lateran Palace library or ...”

“... assessment came due in 1996 and the old material was viewed by Francis Spufford in his eloquent I May Be Some Time with less animus and a more historically minded cultural analysis, mellowing the harshness of the previous ruling. Scott was perhaps a child of the Romantics, a son of the Sublime, a victim of the need for a large, empty metaphor to redeem the ...”

“... which ended long ago, but whose effects continue to be felt today. The term ‘postvernacular’ may in any case be premature. Shoppers constructing ethnic identity through ‘purchase’ can take for granted that Yiddish is no longer a language in which they might express themselves. But others speak and write it every day. How many? The question has yet to ...”

“... the population of Birmingham rose from 15,000 to 70,000. The ironworks in which he had an interest may have failed but with his involvement Bage had taken a stake in the future. Older attitudes lingered, however. A reviewer of Joseph Priestley’s Memoirs claimed in 1806 that ‘there is something universally presumptuous in provincial genius.’ It wasn’t ...”

“... ones we read only in anthologies. There are difficult cases like that of Herbert, whose work we may know from anthologies but who proves on inspection to have written other poems just as good that are not in anthologies, and which belong to a book best read as a whole. Only thus can one develop a sense not only of his skill but also of his context – for ...”

“... for parasites. Some citizens were perceived as suffering lesser privations than others; it may be that Ivor Novello’s real crime was not fiddling petrol but running a Rolls in wartime. All along, the temptations of those six long years had been huge and the excuses for misdemeanour plentiful and persuasive. ‘Perhaps,’ Thomas writes, ‘there had ...”

“... briefly as matches. The weariness of the book is appropriate to a novel about middle age, and it may be part of Baker’s photorealism to respect the inarticulacy of the mind. But consciousness is here treated as an errant and frightening creature to be kept on a very short rein, and it is tempting to see in this the still chastening effect of The ...”

“... Roth, no prude, criticised the novel as a ‘relentless work of violent pornography’; Malamud may have started with Kafka in mind, but he settled for the Story of O. They threatened to pump blood out of his penis with a machine they had for that purpose. The machine was a pump made of iron with a red indicator to show how much blood was being drained ...”

“... beautiful over time. It was a personal take, but there wasn’t much to argue with. Schwarzenegger may not be your cup of tea, but you see what Eco means – and I suppose Arnie’s better than Steven Seagal if a hunk is a must. It’s true, and Eco acknowledges it, that there can only be intelligent guesses about the artefacts that have survived from before ...”

“... Iraq has determined the political landscape of Iraq for the foreseeable future. The shooting may have died down for the moment, but the killings of 2006 and early 2007 have left a legacy of hatred and fear. Even the most liberal-minded Sunni and Shia no longer feel at ease in each other’s company. The story of one family from al-Khudat, a middle-class ...”

“... his point of view the occasion was disastrous, but from other points of view, as he implies, it may have been something else. The event was memorable, but what exactly was memorable about it? Hartman leaves that question open. Was the room ‘overfull’ because it was too small, or because Lacan had tricked too many people into admiring him? On the other ...”

“... speaker’s click brings up the next slide. On the page we are out of his or her control, and we may get stuck or distracted. The idea that it is possible, desirable even, to arrive at a single winning set of cards, even at an agreed set of artists, has gone. Success lies in finding sequences that carry a narrative, although the notion that there is only one ...”