“... holding her own under questioning by prelates and canons. Without formal education, unable to read or write, she responded with such luminous clarity that when she repeated that her voices had returned to her, the scribe was moved to exclaim, ‘Responsio mortifera’ (‘a fatal reply’), in the margins of the court record. ...”

“... become a well-known Village figure after moving to New York in 1924. She was friendly with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, and Roth met Kenneth Burke, Hart Crane, James T. Farrell and Thomas Wolfe at her salon on 61 Morton Street. She set out to make an intellectual of him in the manner of Henry Higgins, Kellman says, and he suspects that her mentoring of ...”

“... this development be understood historically? In an address given in Taipei a couple of years ago, Benedict Anderson suggested that it is best seen as a contemporary version of the originating form of modern nationalism: namely, the separation of overseas settler communities from an imperial homeland, such as gave birth to the United States in the 18th ...”

“... and interrogation was sent up to the assize court and – for the better part of two centuries – read out to the jury. It was against this that the accused had to do the best he could without legal assistance. It was during the 18th century that judges began to insist on oral testimony from those Crown witnesses who were available; but it was not until ...”

“... to imagine in the North. At the opposite pole, my father was 43 when his first child, my brother Benedict, was born. He died ten years later, when I was eight. But in his last years he was sufficiently ill for my mother to think it best to get us away to boarding-school. Here the brevity of biological overlap was further reduced by social decision. My ...”

“... civilisation and secrecy that needs to be got down.’ He said he’d hoped to have something that read like Hemingway. ‘When people have been put in prison who might never have had time to write, the thing they write can be galvanising and amazing. I wouldn’t say this publicly, but Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison.’ He admitted it wasn’t a great book ...”

“... of our race of the 1920s: habit of leisure and at least enough money … freedom to travel and read, to indulge and exhaust curiosities, completely uninhibited talks, resistance to challenge of the right to play, to the idea of growing old, settling down to a steady maturity’. Wilson continues to impress because even at his chattiest and most ...”