“... a whole category of art which, prior to any particular discriminations, is lost on him: try as he may, or may not, he can’t see much in it. This is a generic portrait of a critic who ‘doesn’t like contemporary art’, drawn to clarify a professional dilemma. What is this critic to do? Or what’s to be done with ...”

“... feet across. This suggests that they were conceived together; some historians have thought they may have hung in the same room; the inventory almost says so, but not quite. It is striking that there is no trace of a pendant to Mars – the god’s singularity matters. But for the moment I want to focus on the quality of the two ...”

“... The power of Beethoven’s music is not enhanced one whit by our knowledge that he was deaf. We may be amazed – and yet, as Solomon suggests, this very affliction may have assisted his ‘escape’ into his own world. If this was one of the means by which such magnificent concentration was achieved, the concentration is ...”

“... against the Earnshaw family, or even with Catherine. The real secret of Wuthering Heights may be its fierce and compelling fantasy and metamorphosis of the passions and rages of five and six-year-olds – violence, food, pets, an obsession with being or merging with someone else, kitchen love and hate, a wish to disappear. The novel ...”

“... of an unseemly trade are chanced, repeated and then passed on to new arrivals. Recent events may yet prove the truth of this cynical interpretation of our body politic. But already – together with the party conferences that preceded them – they reveal a state desperate for change yet incapable of achieving it, a political culture in which form and ...”

“... more benignly, the wish to be looked after). Wanting to be defined by our sexuality may only be symptomatic of our wanting to be defined. But the unconscious, as Freud described it, always has a blurring effect (you thought you knew what you were saying and then, by making a slip or a pun, you say something else). In other words, psychoanalysis ...”

“... how that might differ in kind from the experience of using a native language. The sense of relief may be strong at moments of embarrassment, when exchanging a more for a less intimate medium in which to speak or write, but the fact is we are alienated in both, only more happily in the one language than in the other. Second languages can do things for ...”

“... of an unstrenuous, insufficiently ‘manly’ approach to death: ‘Teach me to live, that I may dread/The grave as little as my bed.’ Perhaps there is a suspect eroticism about Ken’s poem: ‘may my soul on Thee repose, /And may sweet sleep my eyelids close.’ It is not ...”

“... buildings in Naples, organised by the private charity Napoli Novantanove. The two open days in May last year attracted a million visitors. Few of them, I suspect, came from the UK, where the episode was little noticed, and where Naples, sadly, is now little loved, but the success of this initiative has been well publicised in Italy. It coincides with a ...”

“... quelled religious enthusiasm in Europe. If national identities grow weaker, religious identities may harden and long-forgotten disputes re-ignite. Evangelical religion thrives on population mobility and social change: the frontierless European Community and the newly-liberated countries of Eastern Europe may both prove ...”

“... aplomb in the world. As the recent chairman of Did you see? he smoothly concealed any distaste he may have felt for the more freakish performers on his viewing panel; and as the one-time pillar of Panorama he was not too pompous to play himself in Yes, Prime Minister and ask questions about the British sausage. His life has been pitched at an agreeable social ...”

“... in Trinidad; properly studied, those beginnings, as Shakespeare suggests in the following lines, may foretell the hatch and brood of time. The book is dedicated to the memory of his father. It is Naipaul’s way to offer an objective account of what, as a traveller, he sees and hears, yet he is always, quite deliberately but with a sort of modest ...”

“... also that some of these notables must have forgotten what the old days were really like. This may be another feature of the bizarre transition now under way: once an over-starched taboo-culture has collapsed, within a short time surprisingly few can recall how it felt and functioned. Back in the Sixties, for example, the Scotsman had a faithful operative ...”

“... At certain moments, which, given there is less and less time to think, may be fleeting, one question surely crosses the mind of most adult readers: do we actually need to hear from professors? Do we, for example, need professors of music to tell us about the songs of the Beatles, or professors of philosophy to tell us that philosophy is dead, or professors of linguistics to tell us about children’s speech, or professors of film to tell us how the sign system is working in Psycho? Aren’t there moments when we are all liable to turn into Uncle Vanya, and start wondering where we left that revolver? Doubts about professors (as against, say, prophets) don’t always mean doubting individuals who are ‘professors ...”

“... like naughty English choirboys and girls of the 1940s. Can Modern Baptists be true to life? We may hope so. Carl Robert Pickens is occasionally called Bobby, but more often Mr Pickens, in a Dickensian, Pickwickian way. He has many problems. He has just been sacked from his job as assistant manager at the Sonny Boy Bargain Store in Tula Springs – partly ...”