“... the Rothermeres, or even Lord Northcliffe, were pipsqueaks running parish magazines. They may have sought to influence the political complexion of a large Western democracy, but Murdoch is in the business of changing the cultural complexion of the entire world. If Mr Shawcross has a single clear message for us, it is that Murdoch is not driven by lust ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Mr Koch’s novel with a pang – compounded of interest and of its dualistic opposite – which may readily be understood. But then there had been other such pangs as my book drew to a close: every few months came a further contribution – not a few of them from the pen of Martin Amis – to a subject which is widely supposed to be exhausted. To suppose it ...”

“... intromission’. Your true surrealist knows good automatisms from bad, high from low. We may think, as no doubt Paz did, that Breton was making an ordinary, and sound, critical call rather than a surrealist selection, but it’s interesting that he could make the call and still, however grandly or ironically, sustain the lingo. The lingo too has its ...”

“... drama. The depiction of marriage as a form of prostitution and the scenes of seduction and deceit may have originated in his indignation at contemporary social evils, although they look more like especially sardonic versions of stock comic episodes; but the scenes of witchcraft cannot be explained in these terms.If Goya actually believed that women rode ...”

“... form of bookmaking. Poems have as obstinate a life of their own as hamsters or baby pythons, and may profit as little from being gift-wrapped. Whoever edits, say, a gathering of Satirical Verse is going to have to fight the fact that Absalom and Achitophel or the Dunciad don’t get better by being bound up with a few hundred other satires; and since they ...”

“... in terms of the family annals. There are helpful explanatory notes, though one or two of them may be queried. It is a little misleading to refer to Marx’s wife as a ‘Prussian’; and when Laura signs a letter as ‘Kakadou’ she is not thinking of the German for ‘cockatoo’, but of her nickname ‘the Tailor’ and of Beethoven’s variations on ...”

“... happens to be pursued. But it is plausible – even platitudinous – to think that the scientist may be influenced, in unconscious acquiescence or conscious reaction, by the unscientific ideas prevalent in his society. That platitude generates a host of particular questions for the historian of science. How far was this astronomer influenced by the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... to all these influences and speculates intelligently on the encouragement which local patrons may have given ‘il nostro Antonio’, as he was known to the small court in his home town. Ekserdjian presents new evidence and discoveries (including an impressive painting of Christ carrying the Cross, which he has identified) and provides many new ...”

“... When New Labour took office on 2 May 1997, supporters who had watched the Party’s rush to the right had already learned to put their faith in the God of Small Things. True, they sighed, Blair and the rest had accepted social authoritarianism, ‘flexible’ working practices, rampaging inequality and Conservative taxation and spending programmes ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”