“... few, Russian or foreign historians and journalists, some of whom are apt to exaggerate what they may have read. Others again are either closed or not even known to exist (it is clear that, all over Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, officials carried off bundles of documents to serve as an investment against an uncertain future). And, as Gaddis ...”

“... the registration of voters to the swearing in of the elected President (due to take place on 29 May) – suggests that the generals know Nigerians are weary of them, and that their best chance of clinging to power is by changing their attire before anyone notices. In the words of Chief Olu Falae, the Opposition Presidential candidate, who was destined to ...”

“... of the Government. We are inclined to think that jealousy of Mr Silberrad’s authority may have had something to do with their intervention in the matter. Still, the Governor was stuck with Routledge and the information that he had been given. At their meeting he had learned that one of Silberrad’s women had formerly ‘belonged’ to an African ...”

“... through them,’ her father replies. ‘A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t.’ Lucy decides not to press charges, believing that this rape, in the South African context, is not ‘a public matter’. In the face of irresistible historical change – the collapse of a corrupt order – the claims ...”

“... a notebook propped on his knees. More important, he began Eugene Onegin. He started the poem in May 1823, and wrote it intermittently until September 1830. It was begun in relative juvenility and finished just as the poet was marrying. As late as 1835, Pushkin considered adding to it; years earlier he had apparently planned a chapter in which Onegin ...”

“... is the listener when we are talking to ourselves? Again it is paternity that is at issue. Tietjens may not be the father of his son, but is he the father of his own thoughts? Something that belongs to you, something as intimate as your own thoughts, could be illegitimate: could come from someone or somewhere else. A lot turns on these nasty turns. Freud ...”

“... New York Beauty will be delirious or will not be. Luckily, we have the example of Koolhaas, who may be the most gifted architect-polemicist since Le Corbusier; like Corb he possesses panache in both design and writing, and media charisma, too. Born in Holland in 1944, Koolhaas first worked as a journalist and screenwriter in Amsterdam, and his approach to ...”

“... reissued,* in which the author warns that colonial policing operations ‘assume an aspect which may shock the humanitarian’.) Yet there is a reality behind Ignatieff’s cri de coeur. Today, expectations are higher. Previous generations of ICRC delegates were content if they could make a modest contribution to mitigating the inhumanity of war. Modern ...”

“... for independent realities. But Hegel realised that Kant’s analogy was not perfect. Cosmologists may be able to discount their earthly existence and envisage the solar system from the point of view of a sun with themselves circling round it on the surface of a spinning planet; but a philosopher could never lay aside the fundamental forms of human experience ...”

“... independence of a nation. Evidence scattered through these pages raises the possibility that Mboya may have been the victim of rivalries within his fraternity – though one probably should not read too much into the fact that Odinga was the instigator of arrangements under which Kenyan soldiers were trained in Bulgaria. Kyle reported from Nairobi for BBC ...”

“... a master of pastiche and invective. Thinks himself the biggest and best phoney of all time, and may be right!’ Anyone skilled as Thomas was at eliciting other people’s prejudices; anyone who can make people wonder so much about his own authenticity; anyone with what he himself called ‘the familiar Thomas puffed innocence’ would seem to be peculiarly ...”

“... inside the criminal justice system: in prison, on parole or on probation. Half the population may be in the market but half is out and, if Fraser is correct, worse off than ever. I recently heard Mudcat Saunders, a hot Democratic consultant who dresses like a cowboy, put the familiar issue of right-wing populism this way: ‘It is just not acceptable for ...”

“... is in part a matter of status, status that is often marked by more than just the new title. A room may be decorated with images of the Holy Cities, the Grand Mosque and other mementos. Large coloured designs of the Grand Mosque with the pilgrims’ names below may adorn a wall. Houses are hung with lights on the pilgrim’s ...”

“... clatter, see its lights glimmering on the rails. As the carriages rumble loudly towards you, you may find yourself visited with an urge – common to the Tube and high places – which inverts the desire to step back and be safe into an imagined jump forward into the void. You see how the Tube came to supply modern images of hell. Eliot begins the third part ...”

“... as ‘think’, ‘deem’, ‘reck’, ‘imagine’, ‘remember’ and ‘forget’. Actions may be straightforward, but the mental torture that produces them – and which they produce – isn’t. ‘The rest thou dost already know,’ the hero of The Giaour tells the friar who shrives him at the end of the story, ‘all my sins, and half my ...”